BHOPAL: Tamil Nadu which topped the road accidents/fatalities nationally, reduced road accident fatalities by 48% in four years. Rajasthan CM announced in recent budget speech emulating the TN model in his state.
Will Madhya Pradesh also follow the suit in budget which is due next month? MP is at the second spot in terms of road accident across the nation for 2016 - 2018, says the ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH) 2019.
A team of comprising lower-level officers from MP had gone to the TN to study the state’s methodology.
However, for now the state Rajasthan had taken lead and allocated Rs 100 crore in the state budget to prevent accidents.
Tamil Nadu IG Transport Pramod Kumar told Free Press informed that TN was on top spot in road accidents as well as in the category of fatal road accident deaths.
In 2016, 17,218 people had lost their lives in 71,000 road accidents in the state. He informed that a orthopaedic doctor had filed a petition in the Supreme Court and the Court directed the state government to bring down the accidents and as well as the deaths.
Following this the TN’s DGP started holding 30 minutes meeting daily on road safety measures. The DGP instructed the officers that their performance in preventing the accidents will be incorporate in the Annual Confidential Report. This proved to be a game changer.
All the cases of accidents are registered immediately and action are taken accordingly. He added that vital point of black spot causing the accidents are traced out and necessary steps to check these black spots are taken.
On every accident police are deployed and ambulances called for immediately to the accident site.
He further pointed out that education of traffic sense are applied in the state more effectively and the accidents have been converted from absconded baby to adopted baby which has made helped in improving the image the State Police.
He further suggested that, before using National Highway, a complete road safety audit should be carried out.
Better drivers should be deployed on the National Highways in order to check the fatal accidents.
Latest Road Safety technologies and sound engineering should be adopted for the National Highways.
He described the importance of videography of the accident especially on the National Highways, to avoid tempering of accident evidence against the defaulter in the court of law.
They had set the target to bring the incidents upto 50 percent till the end of the year 2020.
The target was divided in the year wise in the year 2016-17 the target was 15 percent, but they achieved 6.25.
The target of the year 2017-18 was also 15 percent, but they achieved it 24.39 percent. The target of the year 2018-19 was 10 percent and they had achieved it 14 percent and in the current year till February 25, they had able to achieve 26 percent. Till date their achievement is 48 percent they hope that they may cross the target of 50 percent till the end of the year.
