Mumbai: The Mumbai Police’s newly-introduced Mission Road Safety programme is to identify black spots for accidents, come up with road safety initiatives and helmetless, seat belt drives on the Western Express Highway (WEH) and Eastern Express Highway (EEH).
The WEH and EEH in Mumbai, have continued to remain the highest risked corridors of the city, where the number of fatalities were 52 and 34 respectively in 2018.
In addition to the Mission Road Safety swinging into action, Mumbai Police’s twitter account has also been putting up posts to promote the initiative and create awareness among the masses.
According to a survey conducted by Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety (BIGRS) in collaboration with the Mumbai Traffic Police, road accidents are one of the major sources of death in the city and across the nation as well.
It might, however, come off as a shock that pedestrians fall prey to death traps on the city roads. The study shows, 51 per cent of the victims who died in road accidents last year were pedestrians. 41 per cent were two bikers.
The study further states that due to lack of footpaths, majority of victims forced to walk on the roads. It further states that road accident fatalities of males are much more higher than that of females.
While males accounted for 85 per cent of road fatalities, women were at 15 per cent. While the number of accidents kept differing each year, the male-female ratio was constant across the years.
Traffic police are trying to reduce this accident count further by enforcing traffic rules with the help of modern technology.
The network of 5000 Close Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras helps the traffic police to monitor traffic in a better way and to enforce traffic rules in stricter manner, police have also placed speed cameras and the e-challan system for the better enforcement of traffic rules and violations.
A senior traffic police personnel on request of anonymity said, “If we analyse accidents in Mumbai, over-speeding and judgmental errors are major contributors.
Also, there are many engineering shortcomings of the roads, ongoing Metro work which has left 20 per cent of the city roads dug up, has added to the existing trouble. We can only ensure that accidents don’t take place due to speeding or rash driving, and we are working day and night to do so.”
