TIRUCHY: As many as 33 locations in the city, where accident cases are comparatively high, have been identified as part of the study taken up jointly by the State government and IIT-Madras to come up with a comprehensive road safety framework for Tamil Nadu.
Following a recent MoU between the State government’s Special Task Force for Road Safety and IIT-Madras, the STF has constituted a Field Survey Team (FST) in every district which has since August 1 been monitoring and ascertaining the causes behind accidents in the selected areas.
According to sources, the FST would comprise a police official, a highway official, a village administrative officer (VAO), a corporation official, an emergency medical technician, a civil engineering professor, and three students of civil engineering.
In Tiruchy district, B Joseph Nixon, Assistant Commissioner of Police, North traffic range, has been appointed the nodal officer to head the FST. Pointing to 33 places identified in the city for the study, Nixon said the FST would scientifically analyse the spots in every possible aspect.
The geographic features, structure, and characteristics and landmarks in the roads in the identified locations would be noted, he added. The details would then be uploaded to a custom-made app, 'Field Survey Mobile App', which would then be reviewed by the collector, city police commissioner, and the corporation commissioner, the ACP pointed out.
The details from the review would be sent to the State-level officers, who would furnish the solutions to the issues. Stressing on the FST’s inclusivity, Nixon pointed out an example of how the civil team marked the lack of street lights as cause for most accidents in a location. This would be recorded in the app, he said, and added that many similar aspects like animal straying and crowding have been uploaded as well.
B Shridevi, DCP (South), Tiruchy, said the FST would identify the engineering defects and the enforcement requirements, and suggest solutions that would help in bringing down the accident rate in the identified places. Nixon said so far, 30 of the 33 identified locations have been studied and the remaining would be covered before August 10. The process is much simpler as the State team would be directing the authorities concerned directly which, in turn, would pay the way for rapid action, he added.