Visakhapatnam: The Road Transport Authority (RTA) personnel, who turned blind eye on the over-speeding motorists for the past few years, finally will be placing laser speed guns at strategic places, particularly on National Highway-16 stretch that passes through Vizag city to check over-speeding.
The RTA officials also decided to conduct vigorous drives against the drunken driving during the morning hours to mitigate the road accidents.
With the NH-16 stretch in Vizag region turning into a death trap for motorists, the RTA officials, in association with city traffic police, have decided to ensure that speed limit as per the norms is maintained (some places the speed limit is 40 kmph and the maximum speed limit is 80 kmph on some stretches of NH-16).
“We have procured one laser speed gun and will procure one more. While one will be dedicated to speed checking on the various strategic places on NH-16 and another one will be placed at few stretches, such as beach road and others in the city,” said deputy transport commissioner, Visakhapatnam, M. Prabhuraj Kumar. The officer also said that with the support of a few insurance companies they will be procuring advanced breath analyzers to check the menace of drunken driving.
The speed laser guns are capable of targeting vehicles from a distance of 1.5 km and three teams of motor vehicle inspectors will work at three different places within the stretch of one km to catch the vehicle drivers exceeding the permitted speed limit. However, sources said that one laser speed gun can’t give much results as it will be placed on one side of the NH-16 stretch, so the other side vehicles will go unchecked.
ADCP (Traffic) K. Mahendra Patrudu said that as they were not equipped with the speed gun, it is the duty of RTA to nab the over-speeding motorists on NH-16 stretch and beach road, whi-ch claimed 70 per cent of lives out of total 402 dea-ths in 2013. The officer also said RTA officials have to instill fear among speeding motorists.
