Rise in road accidents: Experts blame lack of coordination between transport, police depts

Generally, transport and police departments run their campaigns individually, which creates difficulties in analysing reasons of accidents.

DEHRADUN: The state government has failed to apply brakes on the number of road accidents in Uttarakhand. Experts believe “lack of coordination” between transport and police department as the main reason for this.

According to the government data, 1,523 accidents were reported in 2015 followed by 1,591 in 2016. (HT Photo)

The two departments have come together following intervention from the Supreme Court Committee on Road Safety (SCCoRS) recently, but the coordination between the two departments is still weak on paper as well as on the ground. Generally, both the departments run their campaigns individually, which creates difficulties in analysing reasons of accidents.

The SCCoRS had directed the government to constitute a ‘lead agency’ that “will solely look into the reasons and mitigation of resolving road accidents”. But so far the government has failed to set up the lead agency. Had there been a lead agency, it would have solved the coordination problem to a great extent, feel experts.

“The only way to check accidents is to plan a campaign jointly. What’s happening most of the times is the police are taking lead. We need to find a way where scientific analysis of accidents could be done and both the departments could achieve coordination to avoid such incidents in future,” said CS Napalchayal, the transport commissioner.

“Unless all the members come under one umbrella, it will be difficult to check accidents,” she added.

When contacted over the issue, inspector general of police (law and order) Deepam Seth said, “We do have a road safety cell at the police headquarters. But that’s being managed purely by the department.”

Nivedita Kukreti, who headed the road safety cell but recently promoted as the senior superintendent of police (SSP) Dehradun, said, “The age-old practice of reporting accidents is done by circle officer, sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) and PWD engineer. There’s no role for the transport department. However, with the SC intervention, things are changing and we hope to achieve better coordination with the transport department in future.”

According to the government data, 1523 accidents were reported in 2015 followed by 1591 in 2016. The first quarter of both years (between January-March) shows decline in number of accidents — 397 in 2016 and 356 in 2017 — but increase in mortalities — 224 in 2016 and 234 in 2017.