NE NEWS SERVICE
CHENNAI, JAN 14
Tamil Nadu has received an award from the union government for ‘Best Performance in Road Safety’. The award was presented by the Defence Minister Rajnath Singh at a function held in New Delhi on Monday.
The state Transport Minister M. R. Vijayabaskar received the award.
The state witnessed a 32% drop in road accident deaths in 2018, compared to the previous year, according to official data. This was after topping India’s state-wise accident chart twice in a row in 2016 and 2017.
The government attributed the decrease to coordinated efforts by various departments and regular reviews by State Road Safety Council headed by Nitin Gadkari, Union Road Transport and Highways Minister (MoRTH).
Besides strict enforcement by police in terms of wearing helmets, seatbelts and monitoring patrol vehicles, strengthening emergency care by establishing more trauma care centres, ambulances and responder bikes helped in bringing down deaths.
“Phenomenal levels of commitment by the health team and the introduction of emergency mobile app capturing GPS & GIS for reaching the accident spot faster have also helped in reducing response time,” said a MoRTH official.
Speaking to the media after the award ceremony, Vijayabaskar said it’s impossible to reduce accidents overnight and efforts will continue to cut fatalities further in 2019-20. Nearly one-third of road accidents are reported on national highways.
“Identifying and eliminating black-spots, installing speed-breakers and signage at such accident-prone stretches have drastically reduced the fatalities in the last three years,” said a National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) official.
Plans are underway to install automated number plate recognition systems and speed monitoring cameras along highway stretches for better compliance with road safety rules. A pilot project is expected to come up on Chennai-Trichy highway.
As far as Chennai was concerned, a major change introduced in 2017-18 was the e-challan system. Fines collected digitally were linked to the government database ‘VAHAN’ and it helped in nabbing repeat offenders, said traffic police.
NE NEWS SERVICE
CHENNAI, JAN 14
Tamil Nadu has received an award from the union government for ‘Best Performance in Road Safety’. The award was presented by the Defence Minister Rajnath Singh at a function held in New Delhi on Monday.
The state Transport Minister M. R. Vijayabaskar received the award.
The state witnessed a 32% drop in road accident deaths in 2018, compared to the previous year, according to official data. This was after topping India’s state-wise accident chart twice in a row in 2016 and 2017.
The government attributed the decrease to coordinated efforts by various departments and regular reviews by State Road Safety Council headed by Nitin Gadkari, Union Road Transport and Highways Minister (MoRTH).
Besides strict enforcement by police in terms of wearing helmets, seatbelts and monitoring patrol vehicles, strengthening emergency care by establishing more trauma care centres, ambulances and responder bikes helped in bringing down deaths.
“Phenomenal levels of commitment by the health team and the introduction of emergency mobile app capturing GPS & GIS for reaching the accident spot faster have also helped in reducing response time,” said a MoRTH official.
Speaking to the media after the award ceremony, Vijayabaskar said it’s impossible to reduce accidents overnight and efforts will continue to cut fatalities further in 2019-20. Nearly one-third of road accidents are reported on national highways.
“Identifying and eliminating black-spots, installing speed-breakers and signage at such accident-prone stretches have drastically reduced the fatalities in the last three years,” said a National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) official.
Plans are underway to install automated number plate recognition systems and speed monitoring cameras along highway stretches for better compliance with road safety rules. A pilot project is expected to come up on Chennai-Trichy highway.
As far as Chennai was concerned, a major change introduced in 2017-18 was the e-challan system. Fines collected digitally were linked to the government database ‘VAHAN’ and it helped in nabbing repeat offenders, said traffic police.
