VIJAYAWADA: Increasing road accidents in Krishna district have become a cause of concern. In the first two months of 2015, 497 road accidents have taken place, claiming the lives of 142 people and leaving 598 people injured. Alarmed over the increasing number of road accidents - mainly due to negligent driving - the Transport Department, along with the Police Department, recently conducted a special drive to create awareness among the public on the need to follow traffic rules and safe driving, apart from booking cases against traffic rule violators.
Speaking to newsmen here on Sunday, Deputy Transport Commissioner S Venkateswara Rao said that compared to the number of accidents in 2013, the number of accidents in 2014 had increased. ‘’Unfortunately the trend seems to be continuing as the number of accidents have been quite high in January and February this year. Human error has been found to be the main reason for majority of the accidents,’’ he said.
Rao said that his department had, in coordination with with police department, conducted an intense special drive recently during which they had booked as many as 5,071 cases against 7,005 offenders and collected Rs 18.40 lakh from them by way of fines. “However, the objective was deterrence.
Our main purpose was to create awareness among the people about the importance of following traffic rules”, he added.
He said that as many as 20 teams, formed with personnel from the Transport and Police departments, were engaged in special drive, carried out in both urban and rural areas. The focus of the teams was on overloaded autorickshaws, driving sans licence and other mandatory documents, overspeeding, drunken driving and underage driving. The teams had registered cases against 74 persons for drunken driving, he explained.
With regard to underage driving, the DTC said that counselling the offenders was yielding positive results considering the gradual decrease in the number of cases of such underage driving in the city.
“We have been organising special awareness programmes in schools and colleges. Apart from explaining the folly of driving vehicles without licences, we also educated the students about the road safety rules,” he added.
The Transport Department had now decided to continue the special drive and engage a special team for the purpose, Rao said and added that they wanted the drive to prove a deterrence to the offenders.
Referring to the case of some automobile shops collecting handling charges for temporary vehicle registration numbers, he said such practice was illegal and added that his department would soon initiate measures to stop the practice. Infographic.