Govt acts to curb accidents on highways

The state government has taken a set of initiatives to check road accidents on highways and expressways.

This comes after a series of accidents on highways including the one on Tuesday in which famous folk singer Kalika Prasad Bhattacharjee was killed.

Sources said that the direction has been given to install surveillance cameras at the spots where there were 10 accidents or five fatal ones. The areas

have been identified as "black spots" and necessary steps have been taken to ensure that no more accidents take place in those areas.

National Highways Authorities of India (NHAI), the state Transport department, Public Works Department and the police will be working together in executing the tasks needed to check the repeated accidents in the area.

It is learnt that besides installing surveillance cameras at such spots, watch towers will also be constructed to keep a close watch on the movement of vehicles. There will be a system to monitor speed of vehicles at such points. Subsequently, vehicles will be plying at a particular speed. Immediate steps would be taken if a vehicle flout the norms and ply at speed higher than the set limit.

It may be recalled that in October 2016, MP Abhishek Banerjee had received serious injuries in an accident on NH-2 near Singur after his vehicle hit a milk-van parked illegally along the road.