kolkata: Bidhannagar Traffic Police has adopted the conventional methods to control over-speeding and prevent road accidents in New Town by setting up the speed breakers made up of bitumen in New Town.
Recently, at least 50 such speed breakers have been set up at major accident-prone areas of New Town, including the road between the Akansha Crossing and Eco Space. Deputy Commissioner (DC), Traffic, Bidhannagar Police, Indira Mukherjee said: “Not only speed breakers we have also set up barricades with solar blinkers. All possible steps to prevent road accidents have been taken.”
According to sources, earlier artificial speed breakers were installed, which were not much effective. After a few months of installation either the blocks used to get damaged. Also a section of motorists used to drive in quite a high speed over those speed breaker blocks despite jerks were felt. But crossing those blocks was not much difficult.
In several instances, accidents took place as the cars did not slow down on the speed breakers. To teach such drivers a lesson, police had requested NKDA and HIDCO to set up bitumen speed breakers by maintaining a certain height. Police claimed that while crossing these bitumen made speed breakers, vehicles will have to be driven at a very slow pace. Otherwise the chassis of the car will collide with the speed breaker which may cause damage to the vehicle.
Earlier, a section local people had opposed the installation of artificial speed breakers as when a heavy vehicle used to move over those blocks in a bit high speed, major vibration was felt by the residents of adjacent buildings. This time those residents have found the decision of setting up bitumen speed breakers welcoming as no vehicle can cross these without being slowed down. However, another section of people is still against bitumen-made speed breakers citing this as a possible reason for accidents. Earlier in case of several accidents, over speeding was found to be the main cause. “As of now we think setting up bitumen made speed breakers will help a lot to curb road accidents. We know this will reduce the speed of vehicles but we also need to ensure safety of people,” said a traffic cop.