Poor medical infrastructure makes highways more unsafe

Hyderabad: About half of  the 7,000 casualties in road accidents in Telangana annually are reported from the state and national highways, which comprise less than a quarter of the total road length in the state. Experts say that the accident rate can be brought down by regular patrolling, day and night checking and booking of cases for speeding, drunk driving, overloading as also rash and negligent driving, but the enforcement is negligible due to lack of staff and equipment.

“The number of deaths can be brought down significantly if victims get emergency medical care soon enough. Trauma care centres and ambulances with medical and health staff should be available on highways so that the golden hour is not lost in transportation,” said Mr Vinod Kumar Kanumala, chief functionary of the Indian Federation of Road Safety. A crucial file pertaining to the setting up of an exclusive department for road safety, which comprises experts’ suggestions for highway safety and details the work force required to conduct checks on highways, is pending with the state government for a year now.

Officials had proposed creation of the department with senior officials from medical and health, national and state highways, roads and buildings and legal and transport. The file is currently Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao. This notwithstanding, officials said the draft will be placed before the next Cabinet meeting and the department would be set up soon. The draft recommends a police station for every 50 km on national and state highways, setting up breath analysers, speed laser guns, deploying patrol vehicles, ambulances, establishing trauma care facilities as also posting doctors and other personnel. Telangana State Road Safety Authority chairman Krishna Prasad said a proposal was to use nearly 50 per cent of the total Rs 101 crore collected as penalties from erring motorists, for road safety.

Unsafe roads

The number of accidents and casualties on highways goes down one year only to increase in the next.

Year    Accidents    Dead    Injured

2010    19,524        6,977    24,412
2011    20,429         7,116    24,187
2012    19,468        6,959    23,104
2013    20,360        6,834    23,111
2014    17,697        6,173    19,779
2015    20,000+        7,000+    20,922
June ’16:     9,500+        3,450+    9,500+