KATHMANDU, July 10: A total of 9,683 vehicular accidents and loss of lives of 178 people in different road accidents have been recorded within the Kathmandu Valley till mid-June of the current fiscal year (FY 2022/23).
According to the Kathmandu Valley Traffic Police Office, 178 people lost their lives in 9,683 vehicle accidents in Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Lalitpur from August, 2022 to mid-June 2023. In the same accident, 242 people were seriously injured and 7,363 people were slightly injured.
Most of the people who died in road accidents are motorcycle and scooter riders. In the current year, 93 people lost their lives due to motorcycle and scooter accidents. Likewise, 56 pedestrians, four cyclists, three each in truck, bus and car accidents, two each in micro and tipper accidents lost their lives while one person died in a loader accident.
When will it end?
It is said that men are more likely to die in accidents than women. During the same period, 135 men and 43 women died in accidents. More than half of those who died in the accidents were among the age group of 17 to 35 years. According to the Traffic Police Office, 92 people aged between 17 and 35 years, 75 people aged above 35 years and 11 people aged below 16 years lost their lives in the accidents.
A total of 5,775 vehicles met with accidents due to the drivers’ negligence, 2,831 due to high speed, 5,95 due to drink-driving, 1,42 due to mechanical failure, 2,27 due to overtaking, 21 due to road conditions and 34 due to weather conditions.
Spokesperson for the Kathmandu Valley Traffic Police Office, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Rajendra Prasad Bhatt said that traffic police have taken forward various programs to reduce the number of vehicle accidents in the Valley.
"In order to reduce the number of accidents, we have been strictly monitoring drunk driving (MaPaSe), the rule that vehicles cannot be driven at a speed of more than 50 kilometers per hour to control speeding, checking the condition of vehicles, whether there are two drivers in long-distance vehicles, etc," said Spokesperson Bhatt. He added that there are more accidents due to narrow roads and increased number of vehicles.
More than 1,800 traffic police are operating from the Kathmandu Valley Traffic Police Office under the leadership of the Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) for the management of vehicles within the Kathmandu Valley. Currently, there are more than 3 million vehicles in operation across the country. Among them, 1.2 to 1.5 million vehicles are operating in the Kathmandu Valley alone.
