12 deaths daily in road mishaps in state last year

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 2

On an average, at least 12 persons died daily in Punjab in 2017, states the “Report on Punjab road accidents and traffic-2017” that was released by the Director General of Police Suresh Arora here on Friday.

Compiled by Sharad Satya Chauhan (ADGP, Traffic) and traffic adviser Navdeep Asija, it stated that the state had witnessed the sharpest decline of 12.1 per cent road fatalities observed in the state last year. The trend was against the rising trends seen over the last few years.

Chauhan said 2.25 per cent of the country’s population lived in Punjab. Its share in the total road accident deaths was varying, from 3.3 to 3.5 per cent of road accident deaths in India in the last five years. About 60-67 per cent of the total road fatalities occurred on national and state highways, both comprising 5.4 per cent of the total road length in Punjab.

Five cities of Punjab — Ludhiana, Patiala, Amritsar, Bathinda, Mohali and Jalandhar — alone contributed 15 per cent of the deaths of the total road fatalities in Punjab, he added. Disclosing this here today, a spokesperson for the Punjab Police said the Ministry of Road Transport and Highway (MoRTH) released such a booklet at the national level annually but Punjab compiled its traffic report separately to analyse road safety arrangements. He added that the Supreme Court Committee for monitoring road safety had also appreciated this fact.

He informed that this book would be circulated to all DCs/ CoP/SSPs to analyse road safety and accident scenarios.

The ADGP, Traffic, said the number of fatalities per million population of Punjab was 148 against the national average of 119. Three districts of Punjab , Rupnagar, SAS Nagar and Fatehgarh Sahib, ranked first, second and third, respectively, where the rate of fatal road accidental deaths was almost double than the state’s average.

In 2017, 18 districts out of 22 reported a decrease in road fatalities. The exceptions were Rupnagar, SAS Nagar, Fazilka and Tarn Taran. A continuous decline in road fatalities was observed in all 12 months of 2017, as compared to the data of 2016, he added.