CHENNAI:Tamil Nadu loses nearly Rs 61 crore every day due to road fatalities alone, said Rajeev Ranjan, Additional Chief Secretary to Tamil Nadu, Highways and Minor Ports Department, speaking at Pledge for Road Safety, an awareness programme jointly organised by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and The New Indian Express, on Tuesday.
“If grievous injuries are added to the above figure, the loss increases to around Rs131 crore per day which is around 3.5 per cent of the state’s GDP,” he said, adding that families are often pushed to poverty because it is people in working age group, who meet with fatal accidents.
Although Tamil Nadu’s roads are much better than those in other states, the accidents and deaths are still high, he said. “Tamil Nadu is not only very well governed, it is also the second largest growing economy in the country, which means that more people are using private transport,” he said, referring to the drastic increase in the number of vehicles on road.
He, however, pointed that better roads and more vehicles should not lead to a high number of accidents. “Countries like Oman and other western countries have shown that it’s possible to have good roads, high vehicular movement and still have fewer fatalities,” he said. In an effort to improve the existing system, he said that the state has invested `1,360 crore on road safety alone and will be investing up to `250 crore in the coming year. “With these funds, we have identified over 5,000 blind spots in the state and fixed them, thus, drastically reducing the incidence of fatalities,” he assured.The programme also had discussions on the role of the government and public in road safety, with experts from the field.