As accidents surge, PWD minister Satish Jarkiholi asks NHAI to conduct safety audit of Bengaluru-Mysuru expressway

According to a government official, the safety audit will give an in-depth understanding of where things are going wrong. “The NHAI will conduct a safety audit and come out with a report on the technical challenges leading to accidents on the expressway. Based on this, the state government and NHAI will make suitable changes,” the official added.

According to traffic officials, waterlogging is a major cause of these accidents. A traffic official in Mandya said, “NHAI has not maintained the drainage infrastructure properly. It is filled with silt and is blocked. As a result, during rains, the water stagnates on the expressway. It splashes onto the window of an over-speeding car, blinds the driver, and leads to accidents.”

Less than a week after it was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in March, the expressway witnessed waterlogging near Ramanagara, leading to traffic snarls. In the same month, a portion of the expressway near Ramanagara was damaged after the metal joints in one of the bridges snapped due to movement of heavy vehicles.

In addition, many drivers do not follow lane discipline and manoeuvre the car or truck recklessly, leading to accidents. Many portions of the highway also consist of steep curves, wherein some drivers have lost control. In a recent case, an over-speeding car lost control and rammed into the divider, crashing onto the vehicle coming in the opposite direction, while going past the curve.

The 118 km Bengaluru-Mysuru Expressway project on NH-275 is a 6-10 lane access-controlled highway developed at a cost Rs 8,480 crore by the ministry of road transport and highway.

Recently, on June 20, three persons, including an Uttar Pradesh government official, died in a road accident on the expressway near Maddur when their car struck the divider and collided with another vehicle traveling towards Mysuru. A police official stated that the accident occurred during rainy conditions on the highway and was likely caused by the car exceeding the speed limit of 130 km/hr, resulting in it crossing the divider.