Published On : Tue, Nov 29th, 2022

In a first, Mah Govt takes pro-active, scientific steps to curb road mishaps in State

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Nagpur: In a first of its kind, Maharashtra Government has taken a different initiative to prevent road accidents in the State. Instead of announcing punishment for violators, it has conducted a workshop for officers of various departments concerned, under the aegis of the Transport Department.

The workshop was aimed at taking proactive measures to help reduce mishaps. Road accidents are a serious cause of concern. Maharashtra registers about a total of 30,000 crashes every year which claims about 13,000 lives. One of the key challenges before the Government is to ensure immediate availability of data on accidents.

To address this, the Government of India has taken the initiative to develop a nation-wide crash data application which goes by the name of Integrated Road Accident Database (IRAD), said Ravindra Bhuyar, Regional Transport Officer at Nagpur. A training initiative is planned by the Motor Vehicles Department, Maharashtra for the enforcement officials to analyse the crash scientifically.

The objective of the training is to upskill the taskforce to ensure good quality and scientific data collection so that ultimately, the Government of Maharashtra follows a data driven approach to ensure road safety. The training is a two-day session involving participants from the Motor Vehicles Department, Police Department and the officials of the Public Works Department.

Vivek Bhimanwar, Transport Commissioner has asked the officers not to lay emphasis just on punishment. He appealed to the officers to conduct scientific analysis of accidents and then come up with a solution. Workshop mainly focussed on finding answers to the questions like how can the number of accidents be reduced by doing a detailed scientific analysis about the incidents.

Accordingly, the issues chosen included the importance of scientific investigation accident, systematic documentation of relevant factors, crash dynamics, whether the driver of the vehicle was wearing a seatbelt or not while inspecting the vehicle involved in the accident, whether the driver was wearing a helmet in the case of a two-wheeler, taking photographs of vehicle involved in accident, whether the person involved in the accident was a passenger, etc.

Apart from RTO, the officials from Public Works Department of Nagpur, Bhandara, Chandrapur, Gondia, Gadchiroli and Wardha districts; National Highway Authority of India, Nagpur Municipal Corporation, Police Department and Transport Department were taken to various accident-prone spots on National and State Highways in order to have practical study of the reasons behind mishaps.

A total of 156 officers, including 99 officers of the Transport Department and 57 officers of other departments, were present for the training for two days.