Even one year after its completion, Haryana Vision Zero still strives to keep Gurugram commuters safe

GURURGAM: To prevent fatalities caused due to road mishaps, the Haryana government introduced Haryana Vision Zero— a campaign which has resulted in reducing the number of accidents in major cities of Haryana including Gurugram.

Even after one year since its inception, the campaign has still not been able to meet its objective of making the city safer for its commuters.

With four death caused each day due to road accidents, the district police invested a large number of resources in 2018 to make the streets of the city safer for its commuters.

Despite 2,000 police officials being deployed on the city roads to maintain the safety and security of its residents, the challenge remained with 1,075 accidents reported in 2018 leading to 442 deaths.

Even though the data was alarming, the figure was rea- sonably lower than 2017 where there was a total of 1,400 accidents leading to 481 deaths.

In the process, Gurugram again topped the list among districts of Haryana of having the highest number of deaths in a road mishap. Pedestrians and people on two-wheelers continued to be the most vulnerable of the groups. Ever since 2011, Gurugram has been witnessing a worrisome trend of seeing 1000 accidents each year.

Shortage of facilities like a foot over bridges on busy roads also added the danger for the pedestrians.

In the past, the district authorities were forced to build Foot over Bridges (FOB’S) by the local residents owing to the death of pedestrians by movement of high-speed vehicles at Gurugram Faridabad area.

Yet, residents complained that poor maintenance and incomplete work has resulted in people still not using the FOB. Adding difficulties to the matter, the large heavy vehicles have also contributed to fatal road accidents. Various studies that have been conducted on the drivers have revealed that more than 50 per cent of the drivers of the trucks have poor eyesight.

Officials also indicate that the visibility further decreased during driving heavy vehicles.

Other factors resulting in the deadly mishap are fatigue, overspeeding, drunken driving and overloading.

Faulty road designs, poor signage systems and poor management of traffic in major roads of Gurugram are making it accident prone, claimed experts.

Not only for commuters but the study also highlights that how the routes in Gurugram is unsafe for pedestrians due to a mismatch in the time of pedestrians crossing the road and the duration of the traffic signal lights. The average time found for the pedestrian to cross the roads was found to be 4 minutes while the time span for the traffic lights was found to be 2 minutes.