HYDERABAD: The data from the MoRTH report on ‘Road Accidents in India 2018’ says that many of the deaths on the Telangana roads hapenned due to error from the drivers end, coupled with accident prone infrastructure in several areas.
The data says that 22,230 accidents occurred in the State in 2018 which cumulatively took lives of 3,475 people. At least 4,942 of these were head-on collisions, 5,927 were vehicles being hit by other vehicles from the back, and 2,832 were of vehicles being hit from the side.
While blaming the driver alone in these accidents is wrong, but their irresponsibility towards road safety cannot be ignored, said experts. "The entire report suggests that drivers are also to be blamed for such high number of deaths. We need to train our drivers better and have more vigilance in terms of whether driving licence and fitness of drivers is checked periodically," said Vinod Kamula, CEO, Indian Federation of Road Safety.
Experts further noted that these accidents also tend to happen because in rural areas there are no service roads or underpasses for the local traffic to pass, and hence, the rate of collision with fast-moving traffic increases, leading to more fatality. The State also has a poor track record on hit-and-run cases which is pegged at 690. At least 1,093 pedestrian deaths were reported.