Road accidents on the rise Guwahati

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, Sept 1: A recent trend that has become a cause of major concern is the ever-increasing number of road accidents occurring in Guwahati.

According to City Traffic Police sources, a total of 206 accidents were recorded in the city in May, June and July, 2017 – leaving 53 dead and 156 injured. As many as 63 of the 206 accidents occurred in May alone, claiming 19 lives and injuring 42 others. June saw 68 accidents – 14 killed and 55 injured. The number of accidents in July was 75, leading to the death of 20 people and injury to 59 others. From January to April, 2017 as many as 98 people lost their lives and 293 were injured in 341 accidents.

Road accidents are very frequent in the city where a reporter lost her life last week. A blithe disregard for traffic rules and traffic sigls is the prime reason why such incidents are on the rise at such an alarming rate. They blame cite buses, trekkers, e-rickshaws and cabbies like Uber and Ola as the main defaulters.

At night, however, things take a turn for the worse. Youths find this an opportune time to pull off life-threatening stunts on their bikes at breakneck speed, endangering their own lives and that of others. While trucks carrying heavy loads plough the streets during this time, people driving under the influence of alcohol are also aplenty. Making matters even worse is the fact that after 9 pm, there is no traffic police personnel at any of the traffic points or junctions and the lights of all the traffic sigls also remain fixed till next morning. This leaves no one to control the flow of traffic and consequently, instances of people indulging in rash driving often go unchecked. All these and many more make travelling at night a very dangerous proposition. The likelihood of an accident also increases manifold. However, police personnel on duty at various points on roads to intercept defaulters of traffic rules claim to have registered cases against 4152 for ‘drunk and drive’ and 4145 cases for ‘over speeding’ from January to July 30, 2017.

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