KOLKATA: The Kolkata Traffic Police has engaged a private analytics firm to study accidents that took place in various parts of the city and recommend preventive measures.
“The firm was roped in five years back, in 2018. Later, their services were discontinued. Now, the firm has been asked again to resume their services. All ACPs and OCs have been asked to cooperate with the firm for collection of data,” said a senior officer.
Cops said the agency will augment the work of the fatal squad of traffic department that analyses the accidents. “The independent analysis will help us in two ways. It will help us compare our findings with an expert who has been into this analysis for the last nine years. Secondly, while the fatal squad of traffic police has an expertise in analysing the cause of accidents, they do not possess the technical skills to suggest engineering changes. This will help us gain additional technical knowledge that can be shared with civic agencies like KMC,” said a top officer from the traffic wing of the Kolkata Police.
In 2018, the agency had analysed 125 accidents and based on their findings and recommendations, traffic cops made several changes in the city.
“The traffic control room has provided notifications on 868 accidents, including the fatal ones, which took place from January 1 to December 31, in 2018. The report provided a preliminary analysis of all these accidents but emphasised on 125 crashes that were scientifically analysed by the firm.
The group then offered multiple recommendations on road engineering. “In 50% of accidents, there is an involvement of road engineering deficiencies such as poor road marking and signage (18%), poor pedestrian infrastructure and crossing (18%) and poor intersection design (14%),” stated the report.
Senior officers said they are looking for long-term solutions from the firm to cut down on some traffic offences like violation of traffic signals, illegal parking and rash driving in the city.
“Most of these violations result in accidents, the reason why the Supreme Court has included them in the dangerous driving category that sees temporary suspension of licences. These violations also put the life of pedestrians at risk. These are areas we will now work on,” said an officer.
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