Centre urges states, UTs to ensure road safety

The Centre today asked all states and Union Territories to address road safety issues on urgent basis including correcting accident spots in the wake of high fatalities in road crashes.
India accounts for 5 lakh road accidents annually in which 1.5 lakh die and another about 3 lakh are crippled.
Road Transport and Highways Secretary Sanjay Mitra urged transport department officials from states and union territories to ensure road safety audits besides other measures to curb road crashes.
He was chairing a meeting of the officials to take stock of the compliance of directions issued by Supreme Court appointed committee on road safety.

There was a review of the action taken by states in terms of policies, road engineering and enforcement to promote safety on roads, a statement from Ministry of Road Transport and Highways said.
The meeting also reviewed establishment of lead agency in the states with adequate dedicated and professional staff to deal exclusively with road safety issues, establishing Road Safety Fund, implementing directions of the Court on Road Engineering as per its judgement dated April 22, 2014, the statement said.

Work done on rectifying all black spots (accident spots) identified since 2011 was also reviewed besides drawing up a protocol and an annual calendar for identifying such spots and their removal.

The proceedings of the meeting including the action taken by the states in compliance of the directions of the committee and their detailed action plan for reducing road traffic fatalities and injuries is to be filed before the apex court before the next hearing on September 19.
Concerned over alarmingly high number of road accidents, the government has decided to spend Rs 11,000 crore on fixing the black spots across the country and had identified 728 such spots for the first phase.
Road accidents cause an annual loss of around Rs 60,000 crore, or 3 per cent of the GDP, to the country and to check these the government has initiated a slew of steps.