HYDERABAD: Are congested roads to be blamed for speeding? Experts from transportation engineering said that the accident, which took place on Saturday, could be a result of common road-user behaviour, often not considered by city planners and engineers.
This behaviour, they said, comes into play when a road user travels from a congested road to an empty road, making them turn ‘accelerator happy’.
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“A major reason why accidents occur is because of the road users’ behaviour. In this case, the individual maybe frustrated on being on a congested road for too long. Once they see a stretch of free road, they may press the accelerator and increase speed to overcome the lost time and to achieve an average speed,” observed Dr KM Lakshmana Rao, Professor from Civil Engineering wing of JNTU.
Most flyovers, especially in the West and East zones, tend to remain empty in non-peak hours encouraging this behaviour among the motorists.
He says that we need to track such road user behaviour to better our enforcement and maintenance of roads and flyovers.
“Once we know that people tend to ignore the warnings on flyovers and want to speed on it in a bid to cover up the lost time, we should research and develop and create systems that immediately warn them. Penalising is not the best option always, however, one must also learn the behaviour patterns and incorporate them into new projects,” added Rao.
He stated that now that it is learnt that people tend to accelerate on the flyovers on seeing the empty stretches of road, they must urgently install speed-reducing measures ahead of dangerous points and control the situation.