Tips aplenty for road safety

Visakhapatnam: The two-day national workshop on road safety concluded with suggestions such as uniform action plan to prevent road accidents in the country and also unified driving licence system in the country. Briefing on the deliberations that ended on Saturday, minister for transport Sidda Raghava Rao said many suggestions came to the fore with regard to reduce the number of accidents and facilitate safe driving in the country.

The transport minister said that like Kerala, other states in the country will form Road Safety Authority (RSA) besides lead agency on road safety for states and districts with members drawn from Roads and Buildings, Police, Revenue, Medical and Health and Deputy Transport Commissioner which could monitor the development of the transport system. Majority of the participants expressed that there is urgent need to add trauma care centres to the private hospitals located close to the national highways.

Union Minister for Transport Nitin Gadkari agreed to sanction one time grant to the hospitals which will also manage the trauma care. Stung by criticism that Road Transport Department has just focusing on revenue rather than road safety, chairman of the group of ministers committee on Road Safety Younis Khan suggested that there is urgent need to fill all the vacant posts in the transport department to focus on road safety.

Transport Commissioner N. Balasubhramanyam said that another Kerala model no helmet-no petrol was also discussed and incorporated in the recommendations. He said uniform licensing system was also discussed and it was suggested that the licensing be made uniform all over the country with individual details synchronised with the servers of all the states. Linking of licence to ignition is also being explored. All the discussions and deliberations would be sent to the Union Ministry of Transport and the minister will place them in the Cabinet for final approval, he added.

Mr Sidda Raghava Rao said that they had identified a total of 900 black spots (where more number of road accidents was taking place) on various roads in Andhra Pradesh. Till now, 500 black sports have been corrected and land acquisition has hit hard to correction of 400 more black spots.

Integrated intelligent signals can solve Vizag’s traffic chaos:

With Vizag city emerging as a big city with increase in number of vehicular traffic, experts have suggested integrated intelligent traffic signals (IITS) to be installed at all the key junctions where there is heavy traffic to mitigate traffic congestions in future. Though Vizag is poised to be a Smart City, traffic management in Vizag is the biggest problem for traffic cops as the cops still ill-equipped in terms of modern technology and manpower.

Intelligent traffic signals will provide much relief to commuters, helping them save time and ensuring a smoother ride. The system will help change traffic lights automatically, based on the traffic volume on the stretches at the particular junction. Whenever a vehicle passes over the loop on the road surface, it induces currents depending on its speed and it can send a pulse to the traffic signal controller signifying the presence of the vehicles, said experts from various parts of the country who are participating in the national seminar on Road Safety in Vizag city.

ADCP (Traffic) K. Mahendra Patrudu said that three major junctions (NAD Junction, Hanumanthawaka Junction and Satyam Junction on NH-16 stretch in Vizag has been experiencing heavy traffic all round the year. “Despite our efforts, traffic congestions at the three junctions have not decreased. Though installation of intelligent traffic signals is a costly affair, it is required at major junctions in Vizag for better traffic management,” he said.

Majority of the junctions face shortage of manpower to manage the vehicular traffic. Once installed, the intelligent traffic signal lights at all the major junctions in the city, will remove the deficiencies of the existing traffic system and provide much relief to the commuters as well as the traffic cops. The experts also suggested that the local bodies have to mobilise funds from major industries (as part of Corporate social responsibility) to implement such major projects.