Road accidents in Madurai city up

Madurai: The number of road accidents in

Madurai city

may have seen a major decline in 2020 due to the lockdown, but the number has gone up again in 2021. In all, 115 fatal accidents were recorded last year, less compared to 185 in 2019. Madurai city police commissioner

Prem Anand Sinha

told TOI that they had taken various measures to improve road safety and prevent accidents.According to police data, the number of fatal and non-fatal accidents in the city dropped from 185 and 682 in 2019 to 75 and 454 in 2020 and 115 and 500 accidents overall in 2021. “The decline in accidents in the past two years across cities is mainly due to the lockdowns owing to Covid-19 pandemic. However, in 2021, things were almost back to normal, so there was a marginal rise. Even then, measures taken actively have helped reduce percentage of accidents,” the CoP said.

Speeding and rash driving being among the major cause of accidents, police took steps to reduce the speed of vehicles in accident-prone areas. “Measures such as setting up barricades, speed breakers etc., have helped reduce speed. Overtaking also leads to many accidents due to head-on collisions. So, centre medians were erected in some areas,” he said. Cases were booked in a targeted manner depending on the type of violations such as driving without helmets, drunken driving etc., seen in a particular area for better enforcement, the commissioner said.Sinha said improvement in realization of fines is also helping better enforcement of traffic rules. “Earlier, we used to realize hardly 20-30% of fines imposed for traffic violations in a day. In 2021, after introducing various digital modes of payment such as digital wallets, there is 80-85% realization of fines a day now though the collection is cashless,” he added. The efforts taken to improve road safety have fetched Madurai city police the Chief Minister’

s Award

on Road Safety for 2020. “Recently in a special drive, we also looked at places, including Goripalayam and

Melamadai

junctions, where some are found to be riskily crossing one-way in the wrong direction,” said Sinha.