Overspeeding a common sight

Vijayawada: Overspeeding by two-wheelers and four-wheelers turned out to be a common phenomena in the city.

Though the traffic cops stop the vehicles at the traffic signals and challan them for violation of traffic rules, they are unable to control the speeding of two-wheelers resulting in the death of a number of youth. A speeding car rammed into the greenery developed in the middle of Ring Road here recently resulting in injuries to the three inmates.

In majority of cases, youth are indulging in rash driving causing inconvenience to other vehicle users. The problem is more in all the busy roads including Bandar Road, Eluru Road and Ring Road.

It may be noted that four persons including three engineering students and a medical post-graduate were mowed down by a speeding car near Ramavarappadu Ring Road on November 7. In majority of the cases college students are racing on the main roads with powerful motorcycles despite the presence of traffic cops.

A traffic cop, who prefers to be anonymous, said that they are helpless in curbing the over-speeding of two-wheelers as any attempt by them would result in severe mishap as the youth may meet with an accident in a bid to escape the police. Ultimately the police will be blamed for the death of any person.

A two-wheeler rider Rama Rao said that over-speeding of vehicles is posing a threat to both the pedestrians and other vehicle-users in the city. He said that the traffic police should install CC cameras at every place to book the overspeeding riders. The overspeeding of two-wheelers became a common sight during political rallies. There was no control on the followers of political leaders.

Besides, some youth are resorting to bike races on the outskirts of the city and on inner ring road. However, the police are able to curb the menace to some extent by conducting frequent raids on the youth resorting to motorcycle races.

As per the statistics of road accidents, 297 people were killed in road mishaps in 2011 against 356 in 2010. Over 1,057 people were injured against 951 in 2010. Speaking to this newspaper, additional DCP of traffic A.V. Ramana said that the traffic police booked 12,000 overspeeding cases during this year.

He said that they arranged CC cameras at 10 different points in the city to curb the menace of overspeeding. The additional DCP said that they conducted traffic awareness programmes for students in different colleges in the past and restart the awareness programmes after the conclusion of Bhavani deeksha.