Early Times Report
Jammu, Nov 17: Roads in the Jammu region have claimed nearly 260 lives in 1,891 accidents since January this year, highlighting the extent of chaos on roads as thousands of private and commercial vehicles are added every month in the state. Official data says that Jammu leads the list of districts with highest number of accidents and fatalities. As per the data compiled by the traffic police, there have been 637 accidents in Jammu leaving 67 persons dead and 721 injured, highest among the 22 districts of the state. Overall 2,637 people were injured in 10 districts, with 220 fatal injuries and 1,671 non-fatal injuries. Further frightening traffic chaos is a constant reminder that successive state governments have followed wrong policies towards strengthening basic infrastructure in Jammu and urban planning is a complete failure. Admitting that accidents and huge number of vehicles on roads have definite connection, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Traffic, Rohit Basgotra said the main reason for accidents was mostly poor judgment of drivers and rash driving. "Our job is enforcement but people should also understand the need to follow the rules. Our department is under huge pressure and everything is being done to streamline traffic. We are trying to use innovative techniques but cooperation of other civic departments is important," said Basgotra. Due to special status of the state, private companies are also not willing to take urban development projects in the state. Overloading of vehicles, which at times is being overlooked by the law enforcement agencies, is a cause of major road accidents involving passenger vehicles. In the absence of required parking lots and no major expansion of road infrastructure in past two decades, especially in Jammu, traffic situation in the city of temples, inhabited by 15 lakh persons and spread over 115 sq km, has become chaotic and worsening with each passing day.
"Road designing in the past has not been done keeping in view the future requirement. Over a decade now the city has not seen any major road expansion project and only one flyover was added in 1990s, which is also under tremendous stress due to increasing number of vehicles," said Gulshan Sharma, a resident of New Plot, which experiences traffic jams daily. Government data says that 12,95,780 vehicles have been registered by the Motor Vehicles Department (MVD) up to August 2015, half of them in the Jammu region. On an average about one lakh vehicles have been annually added during the last three years. |
