The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Police seek 200 vehicles to patrol highway

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, May 18, 2006

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Police seek 200 vehicles to patrol highway

Staff Reporter

Commercial vehicles figure in 70 per cent of fatal accidents, according to study by traffic police

FOR SAFE ROADS: Principal Secretary to the Government, M. Thangaraj (left), Andrew Downing, Advisor, GRSP Secretariat, Switzerland; B.S. Sial, DGP & IGP and P.K. Nanda, Director, Central Road Research Institute, New Delh; at a workshop on `Voluntary road safety standards' in Bangalore on Wednesday. — Photo: K. Gopinathan

BANGALORE: To make highway patrolling mandatory, the State police have sought 200 patrol vehicles, complete with medical and trauma care facilities, Director-General of Police B.S. Sial said here on Wednesday.

The ratio was one jeep for every 50 km. The police hoped to reduce this ratio to one jeep for every 25 km in phase II of the project.

Commercial vehicles, which accounted for 2.3 per cent of the 24 lakh vehicles in the city, figured in 70 per cent of fatal accidents, a six month study by the traffic police showed.

At the inaugural session of a workshop on "Voluntary road safety standards" presented by Shell and Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP) here, Mr. Sial identified the three E's of road safety as "engineering, enforcement and education".

The onus for safety, he said, was on law enforcers, transporters, employees and owners.

Principal Secretary to Government, Transport Department, M. Thangaraj said a Union Government grant of Rs. 135 crore had been sanctioned for the State under the 12th Plan. This would go towards the creation of trauma care centres and equipment in all taluks of the State over the next five years.

Jan Lakey, Director, Retail Network, Shell India, said road safety had become the prime concern of the firm, and a social responsibility.

Andrew Downing, Advisor, Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP), said the number of injuries in road accidents had gone up by 10 per cent in the last five years. Every five minutes, one person got injured, he said.

The WHO Traffic Injury Report, he said, focused on the commercial transport sector. Identifying 60 per cent of the vehicles in Bangalore as commercial vehicles, he stressed the need to focus on these vehicles and work towards raising safety standards on a voluntary basis.

P.K. Nanda, Director, CRRI, said 3 per cent of the GDP was lost because of road accidents. CRRI had started working on road safety audits — on pre and post construction of roads. "In the 1980's, 2 per cent of Indian roads met international standards. With the Golden Quadrilateral, almost 70 per cent of the roads were now at international standards," he said.

Road Safety expert, Maxwell Pereira, said transport was a derived demand — not an end in itself.

More than 70 per cent of India's goods were transported by road, he said. It only takes money power to own a truck.

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