Ludhiana: The Ludhiana traffic police are observing the 32nd National Road Safety Month from Monday onwards but the 92 accidental black spots, where most of the accidents, including fatal ones, have taken place, are crying for attention. It has been a few years since these black spots have been identified, however, till now nothing has been done to rectify the faults to avert accidents there.
The assistant commissioner of police, traffic zone-1, Gurdev Singh, has also released his book in which he has given detailed solutions to correcting the construction of the 10 black spots. But despite that, no practical changes have been made.
National road safety expert Kamaljit Soi said, “The Ludhiana traffic police are organising various awareness drives, seminars, etc. to observe the road safety month. Instead, the Ludhiana police should get the black spots rectified, where people are losing their lives. 92 blackspots have already been identified. Moreover, ACP Gurdev Singh has given solutions by suggesting required changes needed for the rectification of the 10 black spots. During this one month, the city police should get at least these 10 spots rectified.”
Soi added, “Rs 500 crore have already been allotted for this, which the Punjab government has not used for road safety so far. Moreover, I will suggest to the city police to keep zero tolerance for traffic violation during the road safety month. Awareness is important but the traffic police have been holding awareness programmes for quite some time. Now, it’s the time for enforcement as people follow the norms due to the fear of being caught or the fear of being punished.”
“The target of Ludhiana police for this one month should be reducing the death rate by 50%. They should involve people and even I would provide free service to them to make Ludhiana a safer city,” said Soi.
Additional deputy commissioner of police, traffic, Pragya Jain said that extensive studies had been done on 10 black spots and measures had been shortlisted to convert them into white spots. These measures include structural changes, installing road safety measures, removing encroachments, etc. as per specific need of a particular black spot. During this road safety month, the city traffic police will try to rope in all departments for the purpose.
Year Road accident Deaths
2016384
2017351
2018328
2019365