Recent Road accidents in Andhra

Now-a-days whenever you open a news paper in Andhra Pradesh, the first headline one would notice is about a road accident. In the past three days more than 30 people were killed in various incidents. On Tuesday itself, 20 people were killed (17 in Warangal, 2 in Kadapa and 1 in Guntur).
It’s very unfortunate that on Sunday Kota Prasad was killed by a mini truck, on Monday on the first day of her school, a 12 year old girl and another 8 year old girl were killed and 3 more kids were injured badly.
On Tuesday, in a fatal accident in Warangal, the newly wed groom was died. By seeing the news, I just become dumb. What the Government, Police, RTA are doing in AP?
Why the Road transit is becoming a shortcut to death?

There is only one answer for all these questions. Corruption. RTA is corrupted so they are not caring about the eligibility of drivers appointed to operate heavy vehicles with heavy loads which are causing more and more accidents than any other vehicles. Police are corrupted so they don’t care of drunken drivers. I felt happy when the Govt: has ordered Spped Guns and Breat Analyzers for Police and RTA last year and I was astonished to read that neither of them are being used by Police and RTA. The Highway Patrol is simply sleeping across the National Highways. You’ll never see them on Hyd-VJA even when the traffic is stalled on it. Do you expect to see the same here in States??
Government is not funding the Roads and Buildings Department so they never build/repair roads. Whatever funding comes from government to R&B, they just do some patches on some highways and the remaining money goes to build/operate luxurious Guest Houses for politicians and maintain ministers/MLA quarters. Yes. These buildings which are occupied by politicians including the Assembly, High Court and Secretariat are maintained by R&B.

Though they have a very good track record in accidents, RTC drivers are also often causing some fatal accidents. In my childhood, RTC buses used to have a speed lock. For all Rural services it was set to 35-40 KMPH while Express services had some 45-50 KMPH. Due to the competition with private operators, RTC removed its speed locks thus opened gates for fatal accidents. You will notice not all RTC drivers are skilled in operating buses at higher speeds.

It was a great effort by Government of India instructing all States to make it mandate to install Speed Locks on all Transpost vehicles. But the state of Andhra Pradesh ignored this due to the imminent pressures from the private Transport Lobby. I would say Maharashtra especially, Mumbai Traffic Police and Transport department are the best in India. (Some people says Chennai is good, but I have never been there so I am not sure how good Chennai is).  In Mumbai city limits no transport vehicle is allowed to use air horn and they have strict enforcement on vehichles that are speeding. Their roads are too wide and give no chance for stallings. Mumbai has fly-overs for all most 25 years now. And lastly but not least, People in Mumbai obey traffic rules 1000 times better than we do in Hyderabad. When the light turns to Red, all the vehichles stops before the line on the intersection and they yield to pedestrians even when the light turns to Green.

Hyderabad City officials are spending millions of rupess each year on their staff visits to foreign countries to study the transport modes and how to reduce the burden on roads withno success in implementing in Hyderabad. If they are very determined towards the solution of the problem, the traffic problem is no big deal to handle. The real problem is lack of professionalism and lack of interest on public safety.

It’s not fair to blame only the Government, and Polce for all the accidents. We, People has to take care about ourselves than any one can do. Our safety is in our hand. Everyone should practice a safe travel by planning it early, knowing the route, and by following the rules. It is easy to say from a safe shore but if Kota Prasad would have wore a helmet, he must have survived the accident. People in Hyderabad feels like its their right to cross the road wherever they wish. We simply show our hand to the drivers instructing them to stop and yield for them to cross the road.

Hope everyone learns from the mistakes and the recent accidents and the authorities take necessary action to stop these accidents in future. If they do act that way, it is the greatest tribute that we can offer to those who lost their lives in these fatal accidents.