BENGALURU: To ensure road safety for citizens, traffic officials and transport experts have called upon the government to work on reducing the city’s vehicular burden and prioritise pedestrian mobility. With the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways declaring the National Road Safety Week from January 11 to 17, they felt that Bengaluru still has a long way to go on ensuring road safety for people.
Highlighting the need for more pedestrian crossings, Kalakrishna Swamy, DCP (East), Bengaluru Traffic Police, pointed out that a number of accidents takes place while people are crossing roads. “People should be careful and cross roads only on zebra crossings. Since there are no separate lanes for heavy vehicles currently, drivers must ensure they drive in single lanes to reduce chances of accidents,” she said.
She also called for quality infrastructure for both roads and footpaths to ensure better traffic management.
BBMP Chief Engineer BS Prahalad said they are taking measures to improve the quality of roads. “Five contractors have been assigned for filling of potholes and also ensure that road asphalting works are done across the city.”
Janaagraha founder Srinivas Alavilli said in recent years, Bengaluru has become one of the cities with the highest number of road accidents. Cases of accidents of pedestrians have increased, so, officials must give pedestrian safety they top-most priority, he said.