Police said in road accidents, 1,734 people were killed the previous year (until mid-June 2010) whereas 1,356 lost their lives in the same period the year before (until mid-June 2009).[break]
"On account of road accidents, it is estimated that around Rs 3.47 billion was spent on medical treatment and other expenses last fiscal year," Deputy Inspector General Bigyan Raj Sharma, who heads the Metropolitan Traffic Police Division, said at a meeting of parliament´s State Affairs Committee (SAC) on Monday.
Sharma said over-speeding vehicles were a major culprit for such accidents. "We can bring down the number of accidents by four to five percent on an average if we can lower the vehicles´ speed by one kilometer per hour," he said at the parliamentary committee meeting.
Sharma said drunken driving, violation of traffic rules both by drivers and pedestrians, overloaded vehicles, poor condition of roads and vehicles, encroachment on roads and streets are other major reasons behind road accidents, leading to death and injury. He said bus bays, underground subway, parking spaces, and multi-storey parking facilities can help avoid such accidents.
Speaking at the same meeting, Inspector General of Police Ravindra Pratap Saha requested the parliamentary committee to ask the government for an additional 2,000 personnel for traffic police in view of the increasing number of vehicles in the country. "We can resolve lots of problems faced at present if the traffic police is given quasi-judicial authority." said Saha.
"But other government bodies are ready neither to hand over the power to the police nor to exercise the authority effectively," he said. Traffic police badly needs at least 100 sets of breathalyzer to control drunken driving in urban areas, he said.
Given the gravity of the issue, most lawmakers at the meeting said, SAC should direct the government to form a high-level committee to conduct a comprehensive study and recommend solutions to the government. They said lack of coordination among government agencies, among other things, urgently needed to be addressed to bring about an improvement in traffic-management and to reduce the number of accidents.
Some lawmakers and officials said the revenue collected from the sector should be spent on improving roads and traffic-management and equipping the police personnel deployed in the field with necessary equipment. Officials said annually at least Rs 5 billion is collected in revenue and fines from the sector. Altogether, 2,213 traffic personnel have been deployed across the country.
Top officials from the ministry of home affairs, labor and transport management, local development, information and communications, and energy were summoned to the meeting to clarify the reasons behind the poor road conditions, poor management of electricity poles, wires and cables that hamper normal traffic.
After listening to the officials´ explanation, SAC issued a directive to the ministries concerned to come up with proposals suggesting how the number of road accidents can be decreased and traffic-management can be improved in a month. The government agencies are told to submit their proposals within 10 days.
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