Accidents of buses and goods vehicles a concern for city’s traffic police

Kolkata: Accidents involving buses and goods vehicles have become a major headache for the Kolkata Traffic Police as the number of fatal cases has not changed much compared to its figures last year.

According to the annual review report of the Kolkata Traffic Police, in 2021 goods vehicles were involved in 77 fatal accidents whereas buses were involved in 45 fatal mishaps. In 2022, 76 fatal accidents involved goods vehicles while 45 persons died in bus-related accidents. The number of people with grievous injuries in case of accidents involving goods vehicles is 161. In the case of buses, it is 200.

The rising number of cases for not wearing helmets has also become a major concern for the traffic police. Though the figure of prosecution had significantly dropped till 2021 since 2017, in 2022 the figures increased. In 2021, 111521 two-wheeler riders were prosecuted for not wearing helmets. In 2022, the figure jumped to 184853.

The report further indicated that the tendency to jump red lights and violate stop lines has reduced after citation cases were sent to violators for the past few consecutive years. The figure shows that during 2017, 251824 people were prosecuted through Red Light Violation Detector (RLVD) cameras. The figure jumped to 400185 in 2018 but again reduced to 209673 in 2019.

During 2020, barring the lockdown period, as many as 40964 were prosecuted in eight months. The figure of prosecution through RLVD in 2021 was 14,511 which came down to 113531 in 2022. Also, the number of stop line violation cases reduced to 85830 in 2022, which was 1213794 in 2017. In 2018, the figure was 617462 while in 2019, the figure was 683950, in 2020, the count was 144153 and in 2021 the figure was 125337.