Times of India: Agra: Wednesday, August 09, 2017.
An RTI reply
has revealed that in just the first six months of this year, 78 people have
died in road accidents on the Yamuna Expressway. Between January 1 and June 30,
2017, a total of 432 road accidents were registered by police on the 196km-long
Agra-Delhi expressway.
According to
the reply, in five-and-a-half years since its opening, the expressway has seen
deaths of 626 people in 4,505 accidents, with 2016 reporting the highest number
of accidents in a year.
In 1,193
accidents, 128 persons lost their lives in 2016, while 919 accidents in 2015
resulted in deaths of 142 persons.
Similarly, in
2014, 127 people died in 772 accidents, while there were 118 deaths in 898
accidents in 2013. Between August 9, 2012, when the expressway became operational,
and December 31 of that year, as many as 33 people died in 294 accidents.
In the month
of June, the Rail India Technical and Economic Services (RITES) after a study
claimed that most of the accidents along the expressway were taking place
between 1 am and 5 am, as motorists are inattentive during the "graveyard
hours".
It was also
decided in the light of the study that Jaypee Infratech, the concessionaire of
the 165km-stretch connecting Greater Noida with Agra, will offer tea and coffee
to the drivers at three toll plazas along the route to ensure that they do not
doze off at the wheels.
Brigadier
(retd) PK Sheghal, in-charge of expressway operations, told TOI, "During a
meeting on safety on the route, in which senior officials of Yamuna Expressway
Industrial Development Authority (YEIDA), RITES, police and private
concessionaire Jaypee Infratech participated, a unanimous decision was taken to
serve tea, coffee and water to motorists. The move is aimed at reducing
accidents on the expressway."
According to
K C Jain, secretary of NGO Agra Development Foundation, who filed the RTI
query, "There are two main reasons for such a high number of fatalities on
the road - overspeeding and tyre bursts."
Last month,
the Uttar Pradesh transport department decided to suspend driving licences of
people who have been challaned more than four times for overspeeding and
dangerous driving. So far, 11,634 such people have been found, of which more
than 500 are from Agra, according to transport department officials. There are
15 "black spots" each in Jewar and Agra-Mathura sections of the
expressway.
There are 30
speed cameras, 25 video-incident detection cameras and 19 CCTV cameras
installed on the stretch of the expressway to monitor traffic movement. Apart
from that, there are more than a dozen ramble strips on the route, which alert
drivers when they doze off.
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