Fatal accidents on the highways in Maharashtra is a tragic story that has not seen any improvement over the years. In fact, more the expressways and highways, the number of casualties keeps going up. Despite various official pronouncements, road-worthiness of the user vehicles is never checked nor are offences like improper lane use punished ruthlessly. There are many such factors which result in highways and expressways becoming death traps.
The case in point is the newly inaugurated Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Mahamarg, touted as the most modern expressway in the country. Prime Minister Narendra Modi showed the green flag to the expressway on 11 December 2022. So far, the accidents on this Nagpur-Shirdi stretch have claimed 123 lives as on 23 July this year. The expressway hit international headlines when 26 passengers perished as the bus they were travelling in caught fire in the early hours on 1 July near Buldana in Vidarbha region of the state. In fact, the highest number of deaths – 53 – has been reported from Buldana district among any single district. The other significant finding is that over-speeding resulted in 18 accidents while the driver’s dozing or fatigue caused ten accidents, claiming 29 and 41 deaths, respectively. In the other category, of tyre bursts, ten people died. In all, 624 accidents were reported but many without any injury to the occupants of the vehicles involved.
Highway Hypnosis is considered to be another major reason for the frequent accidents on this expressway. The road design is alleged to be the culprit for causing road hypnosis and resulting in such a large number of tragedies. Intriguingly, this has not been mentioned in the accident category. Whereas the official statistics records 98 accidents due to ‘other’ causes, it has put nine deaths, 46 seriously injured and 66 minor injured in the ‘other’ cause. The accidents occurred, according to the government data, on account of tyre bursts, dozing or fatigue, mechanical defects, over-speeding, cattle or animal crossing, wrong side driving, using mobile phone, parking or breakdown vehicle, drunken driving and other causes.
MSRDC minister Dada Bhuse has maintained that the expressway work is going on as per the timeline determined while planning fof it. While the Shirdi-Sinnar stretch will be ready by the end of October this year, the entire expressway will be ready for use by May 2024.
While Maharashtra stands fifth in the table which shows that the highest number of road accidents in the country take place in Tamil Nadu on national highways and expressways. Uttar Pradesh was in the second position, followed by Andhra Pradesh in the third position. Kerala was at the fourth spot. These latest figures have been compiled from the police records of various states for 2021. The details of the number of accidents and the total number of deaths that occurred due to these mishaps are as follows:
Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra are much bigger states than the three southern states that figure among the five states with the highest number of road accidents. The number of deaths in Kerala is much lower than the other states despite the high number of accidents in the smaller state. This is probably due to the fact that medical facilities in the state are more easily available for emergency attention.
Experts have pointed out that the road accidents occur due to multiple causes such as over speeding, use of mobile phones, drunken driving, driving on wrong side, lane indiscipline, jumping signals, safety devices such as helmets and seat belts not used, vehicular condition, weather condition, road condition, human faults of drivers or pedestrians.
While some of these factors attract official attention now and then, the design of the buses is rarely inspected. Mostly, it has been found, it is difficult for passengers to reach emergency exits in the event of an accident. This lacuna has been accepted in several official reports, whose data shows that the road safety department is primarily focusing on offences such as lane cutting and illegal parking, rather than speeding, on the Nagpur Samruddhi Mahamarg or any other highway in the state. Between January 2019 and May 2023, there have been 55069 road accidents in the state, resulting in thousands of deaths.
A study of the conclusions drawn by and recommendations made by various experts committees are unanimous on some basic facts. They found, for instance, in the case of the Pune Mumbai expressway, the following :
Of all the vehicles or road users involved in collisions on the expressway, over 60 percent were trucks. Cars constituted 58 percent of the vehicles which had at least one fatal occupant. Similarly, 45 percent of vehicles had at least one seriously injured occupant. Run-off-road crashes are the crash type seen most frequently on the expressway, followed by collisions between vehicles travelling in the same direction. Vehicles leaving the carriageway to the left and right sides accounted for 55 percent of all crashes examined. Collisions with vehicles moving ahead, stopped or moving laterally in the same direction accounted for 33 percent of all the accidents examined.
Human factors have the most influence on the occurrence of all crashes, and vehicle factors have the most influence on the occurrence of fatal/ serious injury accidents. Human factors alone (57 percent) had the highest influence on the occurrence of crashes, followed by the combination of human and infrastructure factors (22.50 percent) and vehicle factors alone (16.50 percent). Vehicle factors alone (28 percent) had the greatest influence on a fatal or serious injury outcome, followed by a combination of human and vehicle factors (21 percent) and combination of vehicle and infrastructure factors (19 percent).
These observations are culled from a report by crash investigators from JP Research India (JPRI), which worked alongside the Maharashtra State Highway Police. The period involved was 12-months for the crash investigation study along the route in order to identify, record and understand the collision problem.These observations and recommendations align with what has been found time and again. Despite frequent accidents, the police machinery responsible for monitoring the highway discipline is inactive. Many announcements are made after every major mishap and forgotten soon. Unless the highway discipline is enforced without fear or favour, innocent lives will keep on perishing.
A Column By
Dilip Chaware – Senior Editor
A media professional for 43 years, with extensive experience of writing on
a variety of subjects; he is also a documentary producer and book author.
