With road accidents continuing to take toll of lives in the mountainous region of the State due to faulty construction of roads and inadequate number of warning boards at the most twisted stretches of the hilly roads, the engineers associated with the Public Works Department of several hill districts have stressed on using modern technique in the construction of roads and on installing modern warning signboards during a workshop on Wednesday.
They said aside from using the state of the art technique in building roads in the hills, the installation of modern warning boards at the treacherous bends that can arrest the attention of the drivers when the latter negotiate such bends would go a long way in controlling road accidents. The chief engineer, PWD, Garhwal region lokesh Sharma presided over the workshop.
The one-day workshop themed on road safety management hosted by the PWD engineers from Rudraprayag, Pauri and Chamoli districts under Uttarakhand State Road Investment programme (USRIP) saw the presence of many engineers from these districts.
Sharma stressed that PWD should use modern technique in the construction of the roads. Help from some foreign countries should be sought too beside involving the engineers from other States, he said. The road specialist of Associate South Asia Pvt ltd TS Reddy demonstrated by video how accidents are taking place due to faulty road construction, dearth of protective walls, faulty placement of dividers and the like.
Reddy said that as based on the study of the accidents in India and other countries, the conclusion is that the number of mishaps can be brought down by removing such faults.
“The death toll in Uttarakhand due to road accidents is 1,800 to 2,000 per year and the casualties occur mostly in Dehradun, Udham Singh Nagar, Haridwar and Nainital districts. In respect to ten mountainous states, including Jammu & Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Himanchal Pradesh and Meghalaya, road accidents in Uttarakhand is 50 per cent higher for three years since 2011,” he said. Reddy said that the technique of road construction being used in Japan and in Gujarat and Maharashtra should be used too in Uttarakhand.