COIMBATORE: The Coimbatore District (Rural) police have identified 39 road stretches across its jurisdiction as accident-prone areas. The assessment was carried out on the basis of accidents and the casualties reported in 2023. Based on the findings, the police department has made efforts to reduce accidents through short-term engineering measures through the stakeholders departments of state, national highways and transport departments.
The District Police Superintendent V Badrinarayanan said they have reduced the accident fatality rate to 10% in 2023 compared to the previous year 2022. With the modifications at accident black spots, he said that the accident fatality rate would be brought down in the coming years.
He attributed the fatal accidents to speeding, and rash and negligent driving. "We have identified 39 stretches in the 33 police station limits across the district as accident-prone areas by the end of 2023. We are working with transport and highway officials to reduce fatal accidents. Following the study through experts, the short-term engineering measures like the installation of the road marking, speed control through barricades and repair of damages on the national highways are being implemented at the necessary places," he said.
The SP said road accidents were reduced in 2023 by around 10% compared to 2022. "As many as 2,491 road accidents were reported across the district in 2023 of which 688 were fatal accidents. In view of preventing rash driving that mostly leads to fatal accidents, we have set up 12 new signals at various junctions and installed blinkers at six locations in the rural district. Using the district road safety fund and the fund collected under the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) scheme we purchased around 300 barricades to use them in accident-prone areas. These road safety measures show a significant decrease trend in the reporting of fatal cases in at least 15 police station limits. Now we are concentrating on the remaining police station limits where the accident rate is high," he added.
When asked about the prevalence of traffic violations in suburban areas, particularly driving without helmets, and inadequate enforcement on traffic violations, Badrinarayanan said that people may not wear helmets because there is no police surveillance. But we continue to monitor them through the CCTV surveillance cameras. We are levying penalties through e-challan with video evidence. In this way, we have registered about 3 lakh Motor Vehicle Act cases for traffic violations in 2023 and collected a fine of Rs 4.5 crore. In particular, we have registered around 6,000 drunk and driving cases.