Mah to conduct annual road safety audit of Mum-Pune Expressway

Alarmed by the spate of road accidents on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, the Maharashtra government has decided to conduct a road safety audit of the 95 km-stretch every year.
Similarly, state-of-the-art equipments like mobile speed guns and highway surveillance system will be used to check violations of speed limit of 80 km per hour.
This was announced in the Legislative Assembly by Public Undertakings Minister Jaidutt Kshirsagar during a discussion on the calling attention notice by Sudhir Mungantiwar (BJP) and others.
Mungantiwar said in the last seven years, there have been 3,464 accidents on the Expressway. "841 persons had died in 612 accident cases," he added.

Jitendra Awhad (NCP) lamented that security systems of international standards were not used on the expressway to which the minister said mobile speed guns will be used.
The highway surveillance system will capture the picture of the vehicle, number plate and the driver and send it to the control room for levying penalty on those who violate the speed limits, he said.

"The new systems will be ready in two months," he added.
High tensile steel wire rope barriers will be installed in a month's time and height of road dividers will be increased, he said.
The minister said the government has proposed to increase the penalty amount of speed limit violations under the Motor Vehicles Act. The proposal is pending with the central government, he added.

Kshirsagar said the proposal to widen the 12 km stretch between Kalamboli and Sinhagad institute has been submitted to the state infra committee.
To a suggestion of Sudhir Mungantiwar that toll contractors be made to pay for the accident compensation, he said there is an insurance clause on the agreement of toll contractors which will be examined.