Maha highway police launch app for analysis of road accidents

The Maharashtra Highway Police have launched a mobile application for its personnel to collect and analyse the data related to road accidents in the state, a senior official said on Wednesday.

As per the statistics provided by the highway police, road accidents claimed the lives of 13,261 people in the state in 2018.

"The mobile application - MRADMS Maharashtra - has been developed to know the reasons behind road accidents and also for their detailed analysis," Additional Director General of Police, Maharashtra (Highway Police), Vinay Kargaonkar, said.

"Without the scientific data, one cannot suggest measures, like removing deficiencies in road engineering, to curb such mishaps. Our focus is to minimise the loss of life by making roads safe for driving," he added.

According to him, the app would replace the old manual method used by police personnel to collect spot details.

"Earlier, police used to collect the data related to any road accident manually, which was inadequate as it was being collected only for crime records," Kargaonkar said.

The app can be downloaded from Google Play Store, but its access is limited to registered police officials only.

On this app, the police personnel will have to provide detailed information about every accident, including case number, date, time, sections, road type, vehicle category, reason of the accident, number people killed or injured, etc.

The state highway police will hold training programmes across the state for its personnel on how to use the app.

An expert said a systematic analysis is required to evolve possible solutions and undertake counter-measures to improve road safety and rectify spots that are prone to accidents.

According to the highway police, 80 per cent of the 13,261 road accident deaths in 2018 were caused due to human errors.

Pedestrians, two-wheeler riders and cyclists together comprise 66 per cent of the fatalities, the data said.

In 2016, road accidents had claimed the lives of 12,935 people, while the number was 12,511 in 2017.