T-junctions increase fatalities on roads

Hyderabad: T-junctions have turned out to be the most dangerous areas on roads, recording the highest number of fatal accidents reported in 2016-17 across India. These include T-junctions on national and state highways and other roads.

The union ministry of transport and highways has issued an annual report ‘Road accidents in India 2016’, which said that about 37 per cent of total accidents took place at the junctions during 2016 against 49 per cent reported during 2015.

Telangana state and Andhra Pradesh fall in the yellow zone, which means both states have reported less than 30,000 road accidents, which was comparatively less than the figures in central and northern states of the country.

An expert on transport safety, Mr Kumara Swamy, said, “Road junctions are points at which traffic merge and hence are prone to accidents. Also, accidents are multi-causal, which means that it is a result of a combination of factors, such as human error, road defects, engineering defects of the vehicle, non-availability of pedestrian facility, cyclist facility, circumstantial factors such as weather condition and visibility,” he said.

The report indicated that consumption of alcohol/drugs by drivers resulted in 14,894 road accidents (3.7 per cent) and 6,131 fatalities (5.1 per cent) in 2016. Of the total road accidents and total deaths due to road accidents, those caused as a result of consumption of alcohol/drugs by drivers comes to 3.1 per cent and 4.1 per cent, respectively.

However, when compared to 2015, there is a decline in the number of accidents. While there were 5,01,423 accidents reported in 2015, there were only 4,80,652 in 2016, a drop by 4.1 per cent. The total number of people killed in the country has increased by 3.2 per cent, (from 1,46,133 in 2015 to 1,50,785 in 2016), according to the report.