Effective steps taken by the government resulted in a reduction of road accidents in the State, Transport Minister V. Senthil Balaji said in the Assembly on Friday.
Replying to a call attention motion by CPI (M) members, impressing upon the government to take steps and prevent deaths due to road accidents, Mr. Balaji noted that a total of 16,175 lives were lost in 67,757 road accidents in 2012. But, with strenuous efforts to bring down accidents, fatalities got reduced to 15,563 in 66,238 accidents in 2013.
In terms of accident deaths to per 1,000 vehicle population, Bihar topped the chart with 1.6, while West Bengal with 1.5 stood third and Andhra Pradesh with 1.2 was in sixth position. Madhya Pradesh with 1.1 ranks occupied the ninth rank, followed by Rajasthan with 1.1.
However, the ratio for Tamil Nadu was just 0.9 and it ranked 11 in the list. The ratio came down from 1.0 in 2011 to 0.97 in 2012, and further to 0.9 in 2013. These States had a high ‘population to vehicle’ ratio.
In the past three years, the government had allotted Rs. 235 crore towards Road Safety Fund, while Rs. 2 lakh was granted annually to each district to organise ‘road safety awareness programmes.’
While Tamil Nadu occupied the seventh spot in terms of population, it stood second in population to vehicle ratio at 4:1. The Emergency Accident Relief Centres established along the highways had helped in saving 17,346 lives in the past three years.
Incidentally, Mr. Balaji disclosed that 14,795 out of the total 15,563 accidents that occurred in 2013 were caused by negligence of drivers. Efforts were on to reduce that factor too, he added.
