Highway Police, Auto News, ET Auto

Nagpur: The number of road accidents in Maharashtra has come down in the last three years with the help of its ‘intelligent traffic management system’ and steps taken to check over-speeding, as per the state highway police. Last year, the state recorded a drop of 8.47 per cent in all road accidents and fatalities also came down by 3.56 per cent, according to statistics of the highway police.

The state recorded 39,878 road accidents in 2016, and the number dropped to 36,056 in 2017, 35,717 in 2018 and 32,925 in 2019, as per the data.

The data showed that ‘without injury accidents’ also decreased in the state in the last three years.

A total of 6,271 without injury accidents were recorded in the state in 2016 and the figure came down to 3,568 in 2019, a record drop of 43.10 per cent.

The state recorded 11,787 fatal accidents last year as compared to 12,098 in 2018, a drop of 2.57 per cent.

The road fatalities also came down from 13,648 in 2018 to 12,788 last year, a decrease of 3.56 per cent.

In 2016, a total of 12,935 people were killed in 11,780 fatal accidents, while 12,511 people were killed in 11,454 fatal accidents in 2017, as per the data.

A senior Maharashtra highway police official told that the drop in number of road accidents was the result of efforts taken by the highway and state police over the years.

The Mumbai-Pune Expressway, and Pune, Solapur, Ahmednagar and Nashik districts have been contributing around 30 per cent of the road accidents in Maharashtra, he said.

“The highway police had introduced the intelligent traffic management system on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. As a result, the number fatal accidents reduced on the expressway from 96 in 2018 to 74 last year,” he said.

Similarly, fatalities on this expressway also came down to 92 last year as compared to 110 in 2018, he said.

The official further said the number of ‘black spots’ also reduced to 1,000 from 1,050 with corrective measures taken by the highway police.

“This helped the police in making roads safer for users,” he said.

‘Black spots’ are the spots where five road accidents involving fatalities and grievous injuries were reported during the last three years.

To check over-speeding, 96 interceptor vehicles armed with speed guns were distributed across the state last year. Of these, 66 were given to the highway police and 34 were allotted to district police units, the official said.

“These vehicles helped the police in curbing the menace of over-speeding which ultimately resulted in reducing the number of road accidents,” he said.