Most G’gram mishap victims are pedestrians

Sumedha Sharma

Tribune News Service

Gurugram, January 9

Even after two years of pompous launch of Haryana Government’s Vision Zero initiative an average of 37 people continue to lose their lives in fatal accidents every month. As per official records, as many as 442 people lost their lives in 1,039 accidents in 2018.

The number though lesser than 2017 but is surely an area of concern as profilic analysis of these accidents bring to fore bad engineering of roads as one of the key reasons behind the same. Various surveys conducted for government and non government entities highlighted that over 70 percent of city roads were made without considering the pedestrians who form the biggest chunk of accident victims. As per the data 171 pedestrians were killed in 2018 as compared to 154 bikers and 117 car riders. In 2017 this number stood 169 pedestrians while around 190 pedestrians were killed in 2014, 2015 and 2016.

“There are no footpaths, safe traffic crossings or zebra crossing in entire city. Though some foot overbridges have been constructed but owing to one issue or other they have not proved much relevant to pedestrians. Be it old constructed roads like Expressway or newer ones the city planning authorities have not cared to make provisions for people to walk,” says Sunil Sethi as local traffic awareness activist.

It may be noted that even Gurugram police had written to concerned authorities highlighting how encroachment of footpaths, lack of streetlights or wrong positioning of u turns or closure of access roads were leading to many accidents.

“We had registered 481 deaths in 2017. Comparing to this, we have registered 39 cases lesser in 2018. Similarly, road accidents are also lesser by 175. The number of road accidents registered in 2017 was 1,389,” said CP KK Rao.

No concrete steps

• It was in May 2017 that Haryana became the first state in India to adopt a Vision Zero approach to road safety. The CM Khattar had then committed to taking concrete measures to implement this approach, and would like to bring the number of road traffic fatalities down to zero. He stressed the need to reduce road traffic crashes using strategies to improve road design and check road rage and drunken driving
• However, not much has apparently been done except few awareness drives.

Year No. of accidents 

• 2014 1,177
• 2015 1,142
• 2016 1,201
• 2017 1,214
• 2018 1,039

Accident victims

2018

• Pedestrians 171
• Bikers 154
• Car occupants 117

2017

• Pedestrians 169
• Bikers 155
• Car occupants 157

2016 

• Pedestrians 195
• Bikers 124
• Car occupants 101