More lives lost on Tamil Nadu roads every year

CHENNAI: For every 33 minutes, one life was lost and for every eight minutes an accident occurred on the roads of the state in 2013, making Tamil Nadu the accident capital of the country.

The recent fatal accident of Union minister Gopinath Rao Munde has brought into fucus the increasing number of road accidents and safety issues. According to transport department data, a total of 66,238 road accident was reported in 2013. Of them, 14,504 were fatal accidents in which 15,563 people were killed.

This year, till April, the state has witnessed 22,078 accidents resulting in 5,078 deaths. In Chennai alone, 366 people were killed in 3,059 accidents during the same period. Last year, the city witnessed 1,247 fatalities in 9,710 accidents.

Mr Raj Cherubal of Chennai City Connect, an NGO working on urban infrastructure, said to reduce the number of accidents in the city, the planners have to focus on increasing public transportation and reducing private vehicles on the road. “Less the number of vehicles on the road means lesser number of accidents. Increasing public transportation facilities in cities and towns will help in the reduction of accidents,” he told DC.

As far as accidents on highways are concerned, Mr Cherubal said the focus should be on better designing of the road and reducing conflicts between pedestrians and speeding vehicles. He said speeding vehicles on badly designed highways lead to accidents. “There is also a need for having a separate lanes for high-speed vehicles and low-speed vehicles,” he said, noting that many a time accidents happen when the pedestrian trying to cross the road is hit by a speeding vehicle. “Pedestrians should be provided with infrastructure to cross the road at busy junctions,” he said.

A senior highways dep-artment official said since 2005 the number of accidents and fatalities in the state were increasing. “Increase in road accidents could be attributed to high-speed driving and negligence of motorists,” the official said, pointing out that the state government had formulated a road safety policy (RSP) in April 2007 to achieve 20 per cent reduction in fatalities, injuries and accidents by 2013. “We are able to achieve the reduction in fatalities per 10,000 vehicles as envisaged in the RSP,” the official said.

The official said the department has identified several critical junctions as black spots and carried out geometrical improvements to reduce accidents. He said the steps have been taken by the department to construct bypasses and flyovers at the intersection of national highways and state highways which are identified as critical junctions.