District administration initiates a new road safety programme

Similar to the concept of Haryana Vision Zero (HVZ), city road safety experts, along with the district administration, have initiated a road safety programme specifically for Gurugram district known as Safer Streets for Gurugram (SSFG)

Similar to the concept of Haryana Vision Zero (HVZ), city road safety experts, along with the district administration, have initiated a road safety programme specifically for Gurugram district known as Safer Streets for Gurugram (SSFG).

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As a part of the programme, road safety experts would survey all stretches across the city to identify black spots, accident-prone stretches, reasons behind collisions, types of collisions, and, accordingly, suggest engineering or infrastructural changes to concerned public authorities for implementation during district road safety meetings.

HVZ, a collective for road safety experts commissioned by the government and funded by private partners, had seized operations in July last year due to lack of funding. Since then, there has been no road safety programme in Gurugram.

“Our operation will be similar to HVZ, except for the fact that it will be carried out at the city level rather than at the level of the state. Micro operations will help us in allocating our resources better and ensure that they are executed swiftly on ground. We have set a target of carrying out engineering changes in at least 10 intersections or junctions across the city annually,” said Sarika Panda Bhatt, road safety expert, SSFG.

Bhatt further said that the operations for auditing all stretches across Gurugram have commenced, following which a detailed data report would be submitted to the district administration, along with the details of those points from where the highest number of road fatalities are being reported.

“In the audit, we will analyse all the FIRs registered across the city over the past three years, where fatal accidents have taken place. Through studying the data, we will identify stretches where the most number of accidents have taken place. Next, we shall undertake on-site visits to determine the reasons behind the road crashes,” said Bhatt.

For example, an analysis of the three-year FIR data between 2016 and 2019 revealed that the Khandsa Chowk had the highest number of road fatalities anywhere in the city, during this time period. Upon site visits and auditing the stretch, it was identified that lack of pedestrian fatalities at the junction on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway was the main cause behind road fatalities. Subsequently, on recommendation, a foot-over-bridge (FOB) was built at the junction.

Bhatt further said that the only addition or difference in operations between HVZ and SSFG is that in the latter, focus on making intersections or junctions safer for the crossing of pedestrians and cyclists through engineering changes would also be prioritised.

Bhatt added that SSFG has started working with Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority GMDA) for redesigning four key crossings — Sector 44 intersection, Bristol Chowk, Kanhai Chowk, and Ambedkar Chowk.

As per HVZ data, the total number of road fatalities in Gurugram was 484 in 2017, 469 in 2018, and 401 in 2019 Last year, 375 fatalities were reported from Gurugram roads, as per Gurugram police data.