Coimbatore corporation initiates road safety audit, plans to form road safety cell

COIMBATORE: The Coimbatore city corporation has initiated a road safety audit, and it plans to create a road safety cell. The audit will create accident data, identifying black spots, providing recommendations for road design and junction safety improvement, analysing traffic flow and preparing control plans, suggesting speed control, warning boards, signals and others.

Based on the report, the corporation plans to create a road design, improve junctions, safety measures in schools, hospitals, residential areas, recommend safety facilities for pedestrians and cyclists, organise road safety awareness camps and prepare an emergency response plan.

According to official sources, the road safety cell will submit periodic inspection reports, ensuring adherence to road safety standards and guidelines, evaluating the effectiveness of the plan and providing improvement recommendations as necessary.

The corporation has approved the temporary appointments of a retired divisional engineer of the Tamil Nadu National Highway (road safety wing), G Manuneethi, and two urban planning graduates for six months.

Highlighting various areas of improvement, Manuneethi stated that the primary element was speed control within city limits. He said, “Speed limit adherence within the city is very important to avoid fatal accidents. When a person travels between the speeds of 30- 40 kmph, the severity of injury will be very low, and the person’s life will be saved. Recently, I’ve been receiving requests from private companies that are ready to collaborate for this cause, for which we will have to provide them with the speed limits of every street and road within the city, which will be updated on Google Maps. So, when anyone using the maps exceeds the speed limit, a warning sign will appear.”

Further, he stated that more focus should be on bad roads and the amount allocated to the repairs needs to be changed. “When an estimate is prepared, it should not be one-time but have a certain amount allocated for the patchwork or recurring damage at least once or twice,” he added.