Though most of the accidents happen due to rash and negligent driving on Goa’s busy roads, the bad engineering of roads and the infrastructure also plays a vital role in many mishaps.
Almost 98.57% of the accidents have occurred due to rash and negligent driving but also 73.34% of the road accidents happened on straight road followed by 18.92% on curves as per the official figures of this year till August 31. The straight road and road accidents or curves are directly linked with the road engineering and supporting infrastructure according to experts.
With the background of one lakh additional vehicles adding to the existing list, Goa needs better roads, steady repairs and improvements of accident prone zones.
There are total 58 such proposals which are pending with the Public Works Department (PWD) which are proposed by the traffic police to improve or widen the accident prone zones where repeated accidents have been witnessed.
Deputy Superintendent of Police (Traffic) Dharmesh Angle said every year the list of such spots is being revised by the traffic cell and sent to the government for rectification.
“Last year we had proposed 53 zones for urgent improvement and some of the spots were already taken up for rectification and some are still left to be improved. We have added all those needing improvement and sent a fresh list to the government,” Angle said.
He said the traffic cell marks the spots where there is an engineering error, road defect or where the infrastructure is faulty.
“Besides the improvement of the roads we have also proposed traffic signals and traffic cameras to the government which is presently been examined,” Angle mentioned.
He informed they have proposed total of 662 cameras on 205 locations, 53 traffic signals, 20 pedestrian crossing signals and 73 warning blinkers to the government. The sanction of the same file is pending with the government for almost one year.
Ponda hot spot for accidents:
As per the official figures (till August 31 this year) provided by the Panjim Traffic Police headquarters, the maximum accidents have happened in Ponda (289) followed by Margao (242), Porvorim (212) and Mapusa (230).
Again the maximum fatal accidents have occurred in Ponda (30), followed by Verna (21), Mapusa (16), Bicholim (16) and Pernem (14). Ponda is again on the top of the list for having maximum number of two-wheeler accidents with 218 accidents followed by Margao (177), Verna (170), Mapusa (167) and Porvorim (111).
Ponda also tops in truck accidents with 45 accidents till date followed Collem (25), Porvorim (23), Maina-Curtorim (20) and Mapusa (19).
Panjim (car) and Porvorim (bus) top in accidents
Panjim tops in bus accidents with 22 so far followed by Margao (18), Verna (17), Ponda (14) and Maina-Curtorim (10). Porvorim tops in car accidents with 194 till date, followed by Panjim (193), Verna (133), Agasaim (133) and Margao (132).
Accident deaths are becoming more serious than the heinous crimes like murders and rapes in Goa. For the year 2013 there were 36 murders whereas 266 persons were killed in road accidents.
In the year 2014, 34 persons were killed in murder cases whereas 290 were killed in road accidents. In the year 2015, 31 people killed in murder cases but 311 were killed in road accidents.
The ratio of accidents deaths are much more than any of the crimes in the state.
