City roads dangerous on Sundays METRO WORKS ACT AS TRAFFIC SPEED-BREAKER
The city roads have proved to be most dangerous on Sundays, with more than seven accidents happening on an average that day in 2012, revealed the statistics provided by the Hyderabad Traffic Police.
Traffic police officials said that commuters have a tendency to drive faster on Sundays since roads have less vehicular movement, leading to accidents.
“It is a fact that there is less traffic on Sundays. It encourages motorists to drive faster than usual and this leads to accidents. We suspect drunk driving must be the other reason for increased accidents,” deputy commissioner of police (traffic) P.V.S. Ramakrishna said.
While 2,358 road accidents happened in the city last year, 395 such mishaps occurred on Sundays. Majority of the victims were pedestrians and bikers.
“In our city, pedestrians usually have a mentality that ‘we will cross the road, let the vehicle drivers stop the vehicle till I cross the road’. But, the drivers will think otherwise. This lack of coordination results in accidents,” the DCP said.
According to Hyderabad traffic police, 43 per cent of road accidents took place on weekends. Around 1,035 such mishaps occurred on weekends of 2012.
“If the number of accidents goes up on weekends, drunk driving would be one of the reasons. We have tightened our drive against drunk driving,” he said. The traffic police has rubbished allegations that there are less cops on streets on Sundays, saying it deploys enough personnel on important roads and junctions. The ongoing Hyderabad Metro Rail construction work on busy city roads has been leading to chaotic traffic situation causing several hardships to commuters as concerned officials have failed to ensure widening of roads on metro rail stretches before barricading them.
The metro works, which were restricted to isolated areas such as Nagole and Uppal, have now been extended to heavy traffic stretches in Secunderabad, Musheerbad, Begumpet, ESI, SR Nagar, Ameerpet, Lakdikapul, Nampally and Khairatabad.
Though the right of way for the elevated metro rail is 100 ft roads, the government has decided to go for 150 ft to 200 ft on some stretches to facilitate smoother flow of traffic.
However, the government failed to acquire private properties along the busy roads for the widening due to various reasons such as legal issues and opposition from property owners.
The barricades have been erected in the middle of these roads to take up construction of metro rail pillars hampering the flow of traffic.
With this, motorists are being stuck in traffic for more than half-an-hour on either sides of the barricades during peak hours.
Seeing the plight of motorists, the Hyderabad Traffic Police has refused to allow metro rail officials to erect barricades on the busy ESI-SR Nagar stretch and on the Begumpet main road till the traffic bottlenecks are cleared and road is widened. Though the GHMC had identified more than 500 properties for acquisition to take up road widening for the smooth passage of metro rail works, the process is moving at a snail’s pace due to legal and ownership issues.