Nagpur: At a time when the crime, particularly murders have registered significant rise in Nagpur, there is a silver lining in terms of road accidents. Most of us may be surprised to learnt that there has been an 11% drop in the road accidents in Nagpur, thanks to effective traffic policing in the city. Of late, nearly all the signals are efficiently by the traffic cops while the number of two wheeler riders wearing helmets have also increased. Moreover, wearing seat belts while driving four wheeler has become a habit of life for many.
Data fro Nagpur city traffic police shows that till the end of December 2017, 131 less accidents were reported vis-a-vis the same period in 2016. While 310 persons died in road accident in Nagpur police commissionerate jurisdiction in 2016, the figure came down to 232 for the corresponding period in 2017. That translates into saving 78 lives in 12 months.
The city registered 1,242 road accidents in 2017 as compared to 1,373 in 2016, according to the police data. That means around 3 road accidents every day. The number of injuries of road accidents too have come down from 1,510 in 2016 to 1,285 in 2017. “Our target in 2018 will be to bring them further down by holding training camps and coordinating with other government departments,” said deputy commissioner of police (traffic) Ravindrasinh Pardeshi.
Even though the traffic police concentrated on various safety measures, two-wheeler riders topped the list of deceased persons in road accidents with 87 persons lost their lives. It was followed by 64 pedestrians, 15 bicyclists and six rickshaw riders lost their lives in accidents, respectively. The figure of pedestrians killed in 2016 was 92 and 141 two-wheeler riders and 21 bicyclists.
Internal and inner ring road recorded the maximum road accident deaths at 782 and 128 respectively, followed by Amravati road (83), Wardha road (79), Jabalpur road (78) and Bhandara road (39), according to police figures.
“The fall in road accidents has been possible because of proactive measures taken by the police to spread awareness and check rash driving. Another factor is involvement of voluntary organizations working for road safety,” Pardeshi said.
The police also took stringent action against the violators of road rules under six categories like — over-speeding, red-light jumping, cell phone usage while driving, drunken driving, over loading of goods carrier and goods carriers being used to ferry passengers. Besides this the speed of vehicles were reduced by placing barricades at the identified accident-prone spots. Road re-engineering were done in some of the spots in the city.
The traffic police will launch campaigns this year in coordination with transport, health and other departments to ensure road safety, the DCP said.
Senior police officers maintain that never in the past several years, the fatal accidents had come down so drastically.
Though city police is patting their back for the drop in the number of mishaps, traffic experts pointed out the figures have come down only because of various development works like Metro Rail and concretization of tar roads slowing down the vehicles speed.
