According to the data provided by State Transport Authority (STA) this year the percentage of accidents reported so far has dropped by 5.50 per cent compared to the corresponding period last year.
According to the data, in the six month period from January to June end in 2018 total 746 cases of road accidents were reported in the state. This year, till the end of June, 705 accidents were reported, marking a drop of 5.50 per cent.
While in Dehradun, Udham Singh Nagar and Nainital the road accidents have increased, Haridwar which had the highest number of accidents last year showed a major decline in numbers. In Haridwar last year 175 road accident cases were reported in the first six months while this year the number has reduced to 136.
The percentage of fatalities in road accidents has also dropped by 7.29 per cent while injuries have dropped by 9.48 per cent. In total 480 people were killed in road accidents in first six months of 2018 while this year 455 have died in the corresponding period.
Regarding this, Additional Transport Commissioner, Sunita Singh said, “There are multiple stakeholders who are responsible for an accident, primary among them are police department, transport department and Public Works Department (PWD).
These three departments are to enforce the policy and road safety measures that are already in place. In the secondary phase comes the role of health and education department. Health department is there to try that wounded people don’t die and education is there as a preventive measure.” She further added, “Each year we try to make sure that the rate of accidents and deaths decreases, and this year we succeeded, though we are not satisfied. Our goal is to get 100 per cent result, which is idealistic but not unachievable. As preventive measures we have made road safety committees in every district which will be headed by the district magistrate concerned.”
She added, “To make sure that the person driving or riding the vehicle is skilled as per our standards, we have started testing people through this new and advanced form of testing called automated driving testing track.
To make sure that the people do not cheat and do not get into the traps of agents, we have already kept the simulators, biometric system and online registration in place.
To ensure that people do not get fake certificates from private motor driving schools, we are going to make biometric attendance in those schools mandatory, orders for which will be brought out this week.”
