Hyderabad: The New Year has started off with more care for safe driving on city roads. The Hyderabad Traffic Police has identified several accident-prone stretches in the city – areas that witnessed over 2,000 accidents in 2015, killing 318 people and injuring 2,061 – for special steps to ensure safety. There, however, are hurdles.
To start with, traffic cops have zeroed in on stretches where as high as 40 or more accidents have occurred last year. However, corrective measures run into rough weather due to problems in extra land acquisition to effect road design changes. In many cases, the accidents were caused by blind curves.
Traffic bottlenecks were another reason, where too there is need for more land space to change the scenario for the better. ACP (Hyderabad Traffic) Jitender said they have been pushing the GHMC to help in this matter.
There, for instance, is a chilla near Jabbar Buildings on SP Road and a temple in front NIMS. These two corridors are high traffic density areas. Relocation of these structures is yet to happen. “Religious sentiments are involved, but leaders of all communities need to be made aware of the risks involved in letting things as it is,” he said.
Traffic cops cited blind curves, rash driving, bad roads, lack of proper footpaths and foot overbridges (FOBs) as being the main reasons for the high number of accidents. Prof. Kumar Molugaram of OU said
“Roads can be considered as roads when there are proper lane marking/pavement markings. Otherwise, they lay bare and cannot be called roads,” he said.
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