Gurugram roads continue to pose risk for its commuters

Gurugram: With four death caused each day due to road accidents, the district police invested a large number of resources in 2018 to make the streets of the city safer for its commuters.

Despite 2,000 police officials being deployed on city roads to maintain the safety and security of its residents, the challenge remained with 1,075 accidents reported in 2018 leading to 440 deaths. Even though the data was alarming, the figure was reasonably lower than 2017 where there was a total of 1,400 accidents leading to 481 deaths.

In the process, Gurugram has again topped the list among districts of Haryana of having the highest number of deaths in a road mishap. Pedestrians and people on two-wheelers continued to be the most vulnerable of the groups. Ever since 2011, Gurugram has been witnessing a worrisome trend of seeing 1,000 accidents each year.

On an average, there are nine accidents that occur daily in the millennium city. In 2014, there were 1,180 cases of accidents leading to 430 deaths.

In 2015, the cases slightly reduced to 1,140 but the death toll was higher at 435 while in 2016, there were 1201 incidents of accidents leading to 420 deaths. In 2017, there were 481 people who had lost their lives on the roads of Gurugram.

Faculty road designs, poor signage systems and poor management of traffic in major roads of Gurugram are making it accident prone, claimed experts.

However, this time, the structural flaws in Gurugram underpasses also came to fore. Some of the underpasses at Rajiv Chowk and Hero Chowk did not have adequate lighting. In effect, it proved to be a death trap for vehicles moving at high speed.

Moreover, there have been 113 lives that have been lost due to over speeding and rash driving in 2018. The traffic indiscipline in the city can be gauged from the fact that in 2018, over 13,50,000 vehicles were challenged in total by Gurugram police.

The maximum number of fatal accidents has been reported from outer areas of Gurugram like Pataudi, Bilaspur and Farukhnagar within the city centre areas of Sector- 10 while Shivaji Nagar have been deemed to be unsafe.

Shortage of facilities like a foot over bridges on busy city roads also added to the dangers for pedestrians.

In the past, the District Authorities were forced to build Foot over Bridges (FOB's) by the local residents owing to the death of pedestrians by movement of high-speed vehicles at Gurugram Faridabad area. Yet, residents complain that poor maintenance and incomplete work has resulted in people still not using the FOB. In addition to that, the large heavy vehicles has also contributed to cause fatal road accidents.

It is estimated that two out of three accidents at Delhi-Jaipur highway is caused by heavy vehicles. Various studies, conducted on the drivers, have revealed that more than 50 per cent of the drivers of the trucks have poor eyesight.

Officials also indicate that the visibility further decreased while driving heavy vehicles. Other factors resulting in the deadly mishap are fatigue, over speeding, drunken driving and overloading.