No dip in highway fatalities, city roads slightly safer

Gurugram The city has seen an 8.29% dip in the number of accidents on its internal roads but accidents on the National Highway-48 (NH-48) continue to take place

Gurugram The city has seen an 8.29% dip in the number of accidents on its internal roads but accidents on the National Highway-48 (NH-48) continue to take place unabated, as per figures obtained from Haryana Vision Zero.

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At the identified 13 black spots, all located on NH-48, 134 fatalities were recorded in 2016, 2017, and 2018, an average of nearly 44 fatalities per year. In comparison, 46 people died in accidents that took place at these spots in 2019.

However, the number of fatalities on city roads last year was 420, down from 475 and 458 fatalities in 2018 and 2017, respectively. The number of fatalities on city roads has decreased by 8.29% from 2017.

In July 2017, Haryana Vision Zero (HVZ) — a team of public and private road safety experts selected by the Haryana government — started working towards achieving zero road fatalities across all districts of the state.

Last year, after compiling data from the Gurugram police’s FIRs on accidents from 2016 to 2018, HVZ was able to identify 21 black spots on national highways.

According to the HVZ, a 500-metre stretch is termed as a blackspot when more than 10 road fatalities have taken place at the spot over the last three calendar years.

HVZ has so far compiled data for 13 of the 21 black spots for 2019, all of which fall on the NH-48. The 13 spots on the 35-kilometre stretch are Shankar Chowk, Atlas Chowk, Iffco Chowk, Signature Towers, Jharsa Chowk, Rajiv Chowk, Hero Honda Chowk, Khandsa exit, Narsinghpur exit, Kherki Daula toll, IMT Chowk, Panchgaon Chowk and Bilaspur Chowk.

The eight spots for which HVZ is still to procure data fall on the Sohna Road and NH-48. Five of them — Vatika Chowk, Ambedkar Chowk, Subhash Chowk, Sohna Pahadi, and Lakhuwas T-point — fall on the Sohna Road, also known as NH-248A and NH-919. The others on the NH-48 are Sidhrawali exit, Fauji Dhabha and Rathiwas exit.

HVZ officials said the cause for highways continuing to be a high-fatality road is not due to a behavioural or an enforcement issue. Rather, it is a lack of willingness on the behalf of officials of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), they said.

They said that the high number of fatalities are being recorded due to defects in road design by the NHAI across the highways and ineffective engineering changes recommended to them.

“In various district road safety meetings, we keep highlighting the engineering defects on the national highways in the city. However, there seems to be no intent on part of the NHAI, which has often failed to turn up for road safety meetings altogether only to be summoned by the district administration later,” said Sarika Panda Bhatt, programme coordinator, HVZ.

In November 2018, after NHAI officials failed to turn up for a road safety meeting, the then additional deputy commissioner, RK Singh, had stated that road safety is an important topic and hence, the presence of all officers is mandatory, warning that any callousness will not be tolerated.

Bhatt said that over the past three years, the HVZ has repeatedly highlighted flaws — lack of illumination in the unidirectional underpass at Rajiv Chowk and Signature Towers, sharp bends and blind turns on the unidirectional Rajiv Chowk underpass and Iffco Chowk underpass, lack of pedestrian amenities at Iffco Chowk and Shankar Chowk, lack of pedestrian bridges at Khandsa and Narsinghpur, as well as absence of medians at Panchgaon and Bilaspur Chowk, which have high density of rural population on both sides, and lack of streetlights between Narsinghpur and Kherki Daula toll — on the highways.

She said that the NHAI officials have not addressed any of these issues properly, despite repeated recommendations for adopting engineering changes and rectifying the defects.

“In all other roads, authorities such as the Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA), Municipal Corporation (MCG) and traffic police have implemented recommendations by the HVZ and brought down the fatality rates significantly. It is only the NHAI that has failed to adhere to recommendations. Even though we know highways are an accident-prone stretch, without implementation, nothing can be done to bring down the fatality rate,” said Bhatt.

NHAI officials said that to permanently rectify the problems, they need considerable funds, which will only be sanctioned after getting the requisite approvals from their headquarters in Delhi. Hence, the implementation of remedial measures is time-consuming.

“All short-term measures, as per the suggestion of traffic police, are being taken from time to time. However, permanent rectification involves considerable funds, which is done as per approval of the headquarters. The NHAI has spent more than thousands of crore on remedial measures and is still spending more,” said Ashok Sharma, project director, NHAI.