VIJAYAWADA: Aimed at curbing road accidents in the State, the transport department has decided to conduct a road safety audit for 984-km length of roads spread across 13 districts. The officials have preliminary identified that 40 per cent of road accidents in the State are reported due to the engineering defects, besides overspeeding and drunk driving. The same has been forwarded to the Supreme Court recently.
Additional Transport Commissioner SAV Prasada Rao told TNIE that the road safety audit will be taken up to study whether accidents are taking place due to overspeeding of vehicles or any defect in the geometric design of the road. Considering the road accident fatalities in the State, the transport department has decided to give approval to the road infrastructure projects designed following the Indian Road Congress (IRC) norms and after getting them audited by the Road Safety Committee appointed by the State government.
“Around Rs 2.5 crore was sanctioned by the government for the road safety audit. Works in this regard will be completed by March 2021 by the engineering department officials on the 984-km length of roads identified by the department,” he said. East Godavari has the highest number of roads to get audited by the department that include Kakinada-Penuguduru (7 km), Penuguduru-Ramachandrapuram (21 km), Ramachandrapuram-Mandapeta (18 km) and Mandapeta-Jonnada (14 km). Other roads include Kalingapatnam- Srikakulam- Parvathipuram (90 km) in Srikakulam district, Chilakapalem -Ramabhadrapuram-Rayada (130 km) in Vizianagaram, Bheemunipatnam- Narsipatnam (78 km) in Visakhapatnam and Martur-Prakkilanka (63 km) in West Godavari district.
In West Godavari-Krishna, 50 km length road between Bhimavaram- Gudivada will be audited as this stretch has reported more number of accidents in the past few years. The other road stretches to be audited include Gudivada-Kankipadu (25 km) in Krishna, Guntur-Chirala (64 km) in Guntur, Podili-Vinukonda (44 km) in Prakasam, Naidupeta-Ravuru (41 km) in Nellore, Kurnool-Bellary (via Kudumulu and
Alur) (102 km) in Kurnool, Rajampet-Kadiri-Tumkur (94 km) in YSR Kadapa, Kadiri-Hindupur (86 km) in Anantapur and Puttur-Satyavedu (57 km) in Chittoor.