More youth losing lives in mishaps: DTC

Visakhapatnam: Nearly 40 per cent of road accident victims belong to the age group of below 25 years, which is the saddening fact, said deputy transport commissioner Venkateswarlu.

He was addressing a gathering of school and college heads as part of Student Road Safety Awareness Campaign – 2017 at VUDA Children Theatre here on Wednesday.

Commending Bala Satish of Safety Brigade for organising the programme, the DTC said under the chairmanship of Collector Pravin Kumar District Road Safety Committee has been taking measures to bring down the rate of road accidents by 2020.

“This year till September as many as 444 deaths were registered whereas road accidents claimed 580 lives during the corresponding period last year. With our efforts, there has been 25 per cent fall in the deaths. Only with the cooperation of public, we would be able to decrease the mishaps,” he said.

Stating that the transport department was equipped with resources for conducting training classes to teachers, he noted that there is a need for developing a course module with respect to the road safety.

He called upon the heads of educational institutions to register numbers of autos, buses and other vehicles, which ferry their students to schools and colleges.

Later, ADCP (Traffic) K Mahendra Patrudu said the public should be made aware of the future challenges in regard to traffic. “We have been focusing on accident prevention and traffic regulation so far,” he said.

AC Kinjarapu Prabhakar, Traffic ACP Srinivas, DEO Nagamani, Deputy DEO Renuka, representatives of educational institutions and students attended.