Vijayawada: Inability of the authorities to check the indiscriminate use of high-beam headlights within city limits is causing immense inconvenience to road users, and is also leading to an increase in the number of accidents.
The National Highways — No. 5 Chennai-Kolkota and No. 9 Hyderabad-Vijayawada — pass through the heart of the city and drivers of heavy vehicles continue using the high-beam well within the city limits.
This results in the drivers of vehicles coming from the opposite direction becoming momentarily blind. Unless very careful, these “blind” drivers are unable to notice pedestrians, resulting in frequent accidents.
Adding to the problem is the fact that the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation has awarded the responsibility of implementing energy saving measures to a private agency to cut the electricity bills of the civic body.
As part of the energy saving measures, it is alleged that this agency has been dimming streetlights on main roads in peak hours too. The poor lighting on the streets and the use of high-beam is endangering pedestrians, two-wheeler and four-wheeler drivers.
Expressing his ire over the lack of check on usage of high-beams within the city limits, S. Venkata Rao said that he was afraid of driving his car during the night on the ring road as oncoming vehicles with high-beam headlights leave him blinded.
Accepting the problem of vehicle users, Deputy transport commissioner Ch. Sivalingaiah said that one should not use headlights on high beam within city limits.
Mr Sivalingaiah said that the problem could be solved only by creating awareness among the vehicle users as there was no proper machinery to put a check on it.
Additional Traffic DCP A.V. Ramana said that the police can not curb the menace as there earlier followed process of darkening half of the he-adlights came to an end after the introduction of automatic headlights.
Mr Ramana said that as the National Highway passes through the heart of the city, it was quite difficult to interrupt vehicles during the night as it would result in traffic jams.
The city has over 2.3 lakh vehicles, including 31,000 cars, 29,000 lorries, 9,000 auto-rickshaws and 1.3 lakh motorcycles. In addition thousands of heavy vehicles pass through the city using the National Highways.
