Experts in a seminar on road safety issues have raised grave concern over Government authorities’ not-so-active participation in spreading awareness towards road safety in State. At the same time, they have also blamed travellers of not taking road safety messages, signage and rules of road seriously which claimed as many as 5162 lives on Jharkhand roads in 2015.
“Despite all these accidents on roads, the authorities in State have not been as serious as they must be keeping death toll in mind. Especially their approach has remained disappointing in terms of activeness in spreading awareness. However, decreasing trend in death toll during last four-five years also suggest that whatever efforts have been made have worked effectively,” said PMC Team leader (SHAJ) Subhash C Seth who presented a paper on safety audit using IRAP specification and ways of identification and rectification of black spots in the seminar on Road Safety: Challenges & Opportunities organized by Jharkhand State Centre of the Institution of Engineers (India).
The second day of tow-day seminar saw experts on road safety from across the country presenting over 20 research oriented papers on different sections of road safety. The papers included Importance of crash barriers and its optimum design using codes & standards, importance of identification of black spot on highways & actions to be taken with engineering solutions for “vision zero” for road accident, identification and data maintenance of accidents and requirement of safety audit and requirement of trauma centres, safety requirements during construction of roads, 5-Pillars of safety approach : Road safety management, build safer roads, build safer vehicles, safer user behavior and improve post crash care, State level road safety action plan, preparedness of health care centers and ambulance services and so on.
Notably, Governor Droupadi Murmu who inaugurated the seminar on Saturday had asked all the stakeholders, primarily the government agencies, to think of all possible of thwarting any possible road accident. She had appealed to the travelers not to avoid any suggestion about road safety, because majority of the accidents occurred due to ignorance of safety majors.
Road Construction Department Chief Engineer Vinay Kumar lal said on Sunday that the government was serious towards spreading awareness about road safety. “If it was not that, we could have seen accident numbers shooting up in recent times, which has actually decreased,” said lal. However, he too admitted that there were lots of things to be done.