Survey finds 35 spots most prone to accidents. How to make them safer?

NOIDA: The transport department has written to all authorities, including traffic police and public works department (PWD), after the road safety committee of the district administration identified 35 black spots in Gautam Budh Nagar. It has asked the authorities to visit the places and suggest rectification measures.

The black spots were identified in February this year based on guidelines issued by the Union ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH). Any stretch of about 500m, where either five crashes have taken place, or 10 fatalities have occurred in the past three years, is considered a black spot.

Officials said the major cause of accidents at nearly all these spots is speeding, and most of the spots are along the expressway. All departments are expected to jointly inspect the sites by the end of the week. The solutions will be discussed in a road safety committee meeting on June 19.

The committee includes officials from the transport department, traffic police, all three authorities, PWD, district administration, UPSRTC, and a few other departments.

“We have written to the Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority (YEIDA) and PWD to visit these areas and provide short-term as well as long term solutions. These will be discussed during the meeting,” said Himesh Tiwary, the assistant regional transport officer.

“Since there are many black spots along the expressway and most accidents occur due to speeding, we need specialised solutions to control speeding. We can’t put speed breakers on these stretches. We can discuss putting signage and boards displaying the number of accidents at that spot to make people aware,” Tiwary added.

Some of the black spots include Rajnigandha Chowk, DND Flyway near Sector 15A, Mahamaya flyover, the zero points of Noida-Greater Noida Expressway as well as Yamuna Expressway, Sector 5 intersection, Gijhore intersection, Sector 137, Sector 82 intersection, NSEZ, Nangla bus stand, BPL intersection, Yamaha Chowk, Tilpata roundabout, LG roundabout, Sector Pi 3 Chowk, Jagat Farm, ATS Chowk and Jewar toll plaza.

Of the 35 black spots, speeding is the major cause for crashes at 32. Rash driving and driving on the wrong side are the other reasons behind a high number of accidents.

The road safety committee had identified 11 black spots three years ago in 2016, all of which were rectified, according to officials. The new list of black spots is more than three times the previous list. Officials said this is because of an increase in population in the two cities in the past few years.

“Lakhs of people have settled in parts of Noida and Greater Noida in the past few years, which has led to a sudden rise in the number of vehicles. It is important for us to review road engineering in several places considering the increasing traffic. Most of these roads were designed for handling lesser traffic volume,” said Anil Kumar Jha, superintendent of police (traffic).

Source : The Times of India