Director General of Police Tripura VS Yadav on Tuesday expressed his concerns over the increasing road accidents. “Despite strict restrictions imposed during the lockdown that continued for a long stretch of the 2020, as many as 192 people died in fatalities due to road accidents”, the DGP said.
The DGP was addressing a state-level seminar in Agartala on Tuesday on the road safety measures. Drawing a comparison with the previous statistics, Yadav said, in 2018, 211 people died in road accidents, in 2019 the numbers little jumped and stood at 239 and in 2020 the figure finally dwindled to 192.
According to Yadav, even as the number of deaths has registered a decrease but it is not at all satisfactory. If compared to the serious restrictions imposed in unnecessary plying of vehicles, the figure did not signify any major change.
He also said, in 2020 altogether 471 people sustained injuries due to road accidents whereas the figure stood at 816 in 2019 and 744 in 2020.
“The road accidents are a major matter of concern right now since everyday around 415 people die in the streets of India. Although India shares 3 percent of the total vehicles in the world, it contributes 12 percent in the accident related deaths”, said Yadav.
Identifying the major areas, he said, as per the government records Tripura has 5.56 lakhs vehicles among that 3.97 lakhs are motorcycles, 65,000 light motor vehicles and 35,000 other types of vehicles. These are the vehicles that cause most of the accidents in the state.
Meanwhile, Chief Secretary Manoj Kumar while speaking on the occasion compared road accidents with Covid 19 and said, “Covid 19 like pandemics comes once in several generations whereas road accidents exist with us and shall exist in the years to come. So we should chalk out a collective approach to deal with this issue”.