CHENNAI: Appealing to motorists and the public to adhere to traffic rules to prevent loss of human lives, ahead of the 29th Road Safety Week to be observed in Tamil Nadu between April 23 and April 30, Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami on Sunday said road accidents in the State dropped by 8.22 per cent in 2017 when compared to 2016.
He said this year's road safety week will be observed with the theme 'Road safety is safety of life'.
In his Road Safety Week message, he said, "Thanks to various measures initiated by the Tamil Nadu government, number of road accidents dropped by 8.22 per cent in 2017, when compared to the figures for the previous year." Also, loss of lives reduced by 6.16 per cent.
Palaniswami attributed the drop in accidents and loss of lives to various measures taken by government to check fatalities. They included allocation of funds for districts to conduct awareness camps, dissemination of road safety slogans through FM channels, setting up of additional trauma care centres along national and state highways, keeping vigil on movement of vehicles round-the-clock by deploying highway patrol teams and providing recovery vans to remove vehicles damaged in accidents.