Nitin Gadkari, Union Transport Minister, said that the Government has identified 786 black spots on National Highways that mostly lead to accidents. These identified black spots will be worked upon and corrected in order to improve the safety of road users.
The Minister made this announcement while inaugurating the two-day work shop on Road Safety in Visakhapatnam. He shared statistics that there are at least 1.5 Lakhs accidents on the road every year that are due to bad road conditions. He further added that 70 to 80% road accidents are the cause of badly made or maintained roads across the country while also highlighting the ill-effects of over-speeding, overloaded vehicles and drunk driving.
He stressed on the need of top class engineering services and equipments to resolve this issue and commented that by improving the road conditions, accidents can be brought down by 50%. Concerns were also shown regarding the current licensing system in the country and it was agreed that it is far from a fool-proof system. Nitin Gadkari assured that the Government is working on a transparent and corruption-free licensing system.
Continuing on this, Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu said that education, engineering and enforcement are necessary to control and prevent road accidents. Chandrababu Naidu, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, also commented that his government will implement best practices in this regard.
Transport ministers from 18 states as well as World Bank officials and foreign delegates also attended the Road-Safety workshop.
