Road accidents on rise

Road accidents, police records reveal, have been unusually high on the district roads for the past few years. Handing over patrolling of the national highways to the State Traffic Branch STB in November 1997 has not helped.

District police authorities, while acknowledging the high incidence of road mishaps, contend that the STB has to patrol just 60 kilometres of national highways, leaving thousands of kilometres of state and district roads to the police. In addition, they say, all other roads except the national highways are in such a dilapidated state that accidents are inevitable.

Most importantly, district police officials say that neither the police force nor the Regional Transport Office had the personnel to check the illegal use of jeeps, matadors and tempos as passenger vehicles in rural areas. These overstuffed vehicles contribute largely to deaths on the road. Yet these cannot be stopped altogether, because the state government-run ST rural service is not as regular as it should be.

Admitting that the plying of passenger jeeps and tempos on the district roads was illegal, District Superintendent of Police V M Pargi says that the system was, however, convenient for the people and thus flourished. 8220;In addition, the local roads are not designed for safety and are not carpeted regularly,8221; Pargi told Express Newsline while listing some causes of the high occurrence of accidents.

Other officials are critical of the STB work itself, saying that accidents have not reduced since STB took over. According to them, the main reason why the STB has not performed 8220;satisfactorily8221; is because there is no local supervision of the STB Traffic Aid Posts personnel.

Records of the rural police stations, where the cases are registered finally, indicate that while fatalities occur largely among jeeps, tempos, matadors, two-wheelers and pedestrians, trucks and tankers are responsible for almost all accidents on the national highway.