Chairman of the Supreme Court Committee on Road Safety (CoRS) Justice Abhay Manohar Sapre has expressed concern over road accidents and related fatality rate in Telangana.
At a meeting held here on Saturday to review road safety interventions taken up by Telangana, he said although the number of accidents was higher in countries China, Japan and Germany, fatalities were only few thousands. However, in India, about 1.5 lakh persons were dying every year in road accidents.
In a recent audit conducted by the CoRS with the help of consultants, it was recommended that road safety in Telangana needed improvement, Justice Sapre said. He informed that 91% of road accident fatalities in Telangana were due to over-speeding. “The road accident-related fatalities will be reduced to a large extent if wearing of helmets and fastening seat belts is ensured 100% and over-speeding is controlled,” he said.
The CoRS chairman suggested that the aim should be to bring down fatalities and efforts should be towards achieving zero fatalities.
In a detailed powerpoint presentation made on behalf of the State government, it was informed to the chairman that it was recently decided to draft the services of NIT-Warangal in assisting the lead agency with full time domain experts and providing consultants and to allocate ₹25 crore as non-lapsable Road Safety Fund.
Authorities of GHMC explained that a Comprehensive Road Maintenance Programme was taken up with ₹1,839 core for five years for pedestrian safety with increased length of footpaths, foot overbridges, attending to black spots on roads, undertaking permanent solution for waterlogging points on roads, junction improvement works at 33 locations, marking of zebra lines, rumble strips, keeping sign boards and displaying traffic signs wherever necessary.
Police authorities explained that Hyderabad has about 6 lakh CCTV cameras already installed and and another 5 lakh were planned for installation on various arterial roads, all metro stations, MMTS stations/South Central Railway terminals, TSRTC bus terminals, bus shelters and bus bays. Trauma Care Centres equipped with advance life support ambulances were established by HMDA on the entire Outer Ring Road stretch.
The authorities of Transport Department stated that 10,728 driving licences were suspended in 2021, including 6,298 due to drunk driving.
The chairman of CoRS appreciated the efforts and directed the authorities to strengthen enforcement and other measures further.
Transport Commission M.R.M.Rao, Additional DGPs Jitender and Sandeep Shandilya, GHMC Commissioner D.S. Lokesh Kumar, Project Director-ORR B.M. Santosh, Engineer-in-Chief (State Roads) P. Ravinder Rao, ENC (NH) I. Ganapathi Reddy and Director of Medical Education K. Ramesh Reddy were among those who attended.
