Will bring down accident rate by half: Gadkari
The Union government is making efforts to bring down the rate of accidents by half by 2020 adhering to the Brasilia Declaration, said Union Minister for Transport, Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadkari, while delivering the keynote address at the inaugural session of the two-day national workshop on road safety here on Friday.
Visakhapatnam: The Union government is making efforts to bring down the rate of accidents by half by 2020 adhering to the Brasilia Declaration, said Union Minister for Transport, Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadkari, while delivering the keynote address at the inaugural session of the two-day national workshop on road safety here on Friday.
Expressing serious concern over the increasing deaths on the roads, which registered 1.5 lakh last year, Gadkari said his ministry has identified 786 black spots in the country where maximum number of accidents was taking place and under Pradhana Mantri Suraksha Sadak Yojana, Rs 11,000 crore would be spent to remove them during the next two years.
Power will also be given to the regional offices of the transport and district authorities to identify and remove the black spots during the same period. Similarly, 96,000 km stretch of national highways would be converted into 2 lakh kilometers in the ensuing years of which 1,000 km would be converted into four-lane and 20,000 km into six-lane.
“We will lay cement roads wherever possible using latest technology and make them on par with international standards,” Gadkari said. Setting aside the blame that the drivers were responsible for 77 per cent of accident deaths, the minister said road engineering fault and system deficiency was the main cause of deaths and his ministry would spend another Rs 10,000 crore on road margins and modernisation of roads in the country.
In order to save injured persons, he said that his ministry has decided to introduce 1,000 ambulances across the country with each vehicle having a doctor, a nurse and an assistant. The proposal is to have one ambulance for every 150 km in the country, he added. Participating in the meeting, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu his government would strive to make Andhra Pradesh accident free.
Stating that the state accounted for 8,275 deaths last year and Visakhapatnam district registered 704 deaths, he said all 700 black spots identified would be closed on top priority. Enforcement of the provisions of the road safety has yielded good results and the proposal for fixation of higher punishments will further reduce the rate of accidents, the Chief Minister said.
The AP government is also taking tough measures to control drunken driving by using interceptors and speed guns and added that data integration with toll plazas would be useful for tracking and assessing the movement of vehicles.
Union Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said road accident became the biggest killer in the country and serious efforts should be made to curb them.
