Hyderabad, April 19: Chief Minister K Rosaiah has favoured constitution of a road safety coordination panel comprising senior officials from the departments concerned to regularly meet and chalk out steps to minimise road accidents to a larger extent.
“There has been a spurt in road accidents of late. Many precious lives have been lost in these accidents and many families lost their breadwinners. It is very painful. I am concerned about this. It’s high time we put an end to it. Can we not do something?’’ Rosaiah expressed concern that there were 10 major accidents in the current month in the districts of Nalgonda, Kurnool, Khammam, Nizamabad, Nellore, Warangal etc in which 43 persosn lost their lives. The latest being the ghastly one at Mydukur in Kadapa district on Saturday that claimed nine lives.
“This cannot go on like this and we have to get into action and see that road accidents were minimised.’’ Rosaiah said that he wanted all the departments concerned like traffic, police and roads & buildings to work in close coordination and to bring down the number of accidents.
Rules should be strictly enforced and innocent lives saved, he said and appreciated the department for propagating the theme, `Life Is Safe If Driving Is Safe’.
Rosaiah will soon hold a high-level review meeting with ministers and top officials in this regard and that will be followed by interaction with district officials, highway patrolling police and other departments concerned.
He wanted that road rules like the lane system, driving regulations and parking enforced strictly and highway patrolling intensified.
He discussed traffic safety measures with Transport Minister S Vijayarama Raju, transport commissioner Raymond Peter and other officials and asked them to enforce the rules strictly to bring down traffic mishaps.
Rosaiah asked the GHMC, panchyat raj, R&B and other departments to complete the road-widening works at the earliest. He asked district collectors to regularly conduct district road safety committee meetings and take immediate steps to identify accidentprone areas and take remedial measures. He also directed that the State Road Safety Council meetings be convened at the earliest with ministers of R&B, Health, MA&UD, Home and Transport to chalk out strategies to reduce the ever-increasing number of accidents.
He instructed the health department to identify more number of hospitals that can serve as traumatic care centres besides providing immediate emergency assistance through `108’ ambulance service to save precious lives.
Expansion of the road network, `transport motorisation’ and urbanisation have led to the increase in road accidents. The total number of vehicles in Andhra Pradesh is 85 lakh, of which 80 per cent were two-wheelers.
The number of four-wheelers is going up substantially.
The chief minister was informed that an analysis of road accidents indicates that around 80 per cent of them were taking place due to drivers’ fault. The transport department had initiated a number of measures to reduce the accident rate and the roads and buildings department was regularly undertaking improvement of black spots which were accident-prone. Under the National Highway Programme, linkages with hospitals to serve as traumatic care centres were being created.
–Agencies