The city continues to lead in the number of road accidents and deaths, going by figures recorded in January this year in 32 districts of the State.
According to a report, ‘Road Accident Analysis in Tamil Nadu January 2019’, brought out by the Transport and Road Safety Commissioner, Chennai leads with 689 accidents of a total of 5,173 road accidents across the State for the month of January and also in the number of fatalities - at 114 of the total of 993 deaths.
In January 2018, Chennai recorded the highest number of accidents - 611 - and deaths - 103. Kancheepuram comes in at second place with 297 accidents and 77 fatalities.
Good news
However, the good news is that the total number of accidents and deaths have reduced in January this year compared to the same month last year. While the total number of accidents recorded this year came in at 5,173, last year it was 5,798. The fatalities numbered 993 this year compared to 1,189 last year.
Hard line works
Even as the Supreme Court Committee on Road Safety has been taking several punitive steps to bring down accidents, the data shows that the total number of accidents and deaths have been coming down during the past two years.
The Supreme Court Committee on Road Safety has been using the suspension of driving licences as a trump card in its attempt to bring down road accidents. Driving licences are being suspended for various traffic violations like speeding, using mobile phone while driving, overloading of passengers and drunken driving.
An official of the Transport and Road Safety Department said the road safety committee has been aggressively suspending driving licences for traffic violations during the past two years. The traffic police has recommended the highest number of cancellation of driving licences for those using mobile phones while driving. While in 2017 the driving licences cancelled under traffic violations for using mobile phones stood at 57,158, in 2018 it more than doubled to 1,26,181. In terms of district-wise cancellation of driving licences for various traffic violations, Chennai stands first.
The interesting thing in the data on the six causes of accidents including the fault of driver, fault of the pedestrian, bad roads and mechanical defects, is that fault of the driver remains the major cause of accidents. Of the total of 5,173 accidents, 5,099 were caused by the fault of the drivers.
Published - March 01, 2019 01:31 am IST
