Pune: A report of the Transport Committee which was submitted recently to the Regional Transport Authority (RTA), stated that there were 14,051 accidents in Pune district in the past three-and-a-half years from 2015 to July 2018. In the accidents, 5,308 people died while 8,744 were injured, which means four people died every day during the period. Hence, the Transport Committee has instructed officials to take appropriate steps to prevent road accidents in the district.
The traffic scenario in Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad and rural areas is worsening day-by-day. Increasing urbanisation, growing population, rising number of vehicles, inadequate roads and their poor condition have resulted in heavy traffic jams.
Besides, due to lack of scientific methods in building roads, the number of casualties has been increasing. Vehicles coming from Mumbai, Nashik, Ahmednagar, Solapur and Satara pass through Pune.
As per the report, the vehicle movement has increased in the past four years. Also, drivers are not following the rules and regulations of the Motor Vehicle Act. Hence, the city and district are witnessing road accidents every day. Vehicles also have no control on speed which is also the main reason behind the increasing number of accidents, found the report.
According to the report, 4,787 accidents occurred in 2015, in which 1,543 people died and 2,535 were injured. There were 3,737 accidents in 2016, in which 1,471 people died while 2,266 were seriously injured.
In 2017 3,975 accidents took place, in which 1,399 people were killed and 2,577 were injured. Till July 2018, 2,261 accidents occurred in different parts of the district, in which 895 were killed and 1,366 were injured.
The report found that every day, about 1,000 vehicles are registered in Pune. Also, uncontrolled parking, encroachments, bad condition of roads, indisciplined traffic, less number of traffic police, traffic jams due to development work are adding to traffic woes. There is a need to build multilevel parkings and complete BRTS projects and ring roads to overcome traffic problems in the city.
