Visakhapatnam Police Commissioner plans to reduce fatal accidents by 50%

Visakhapatnam Police Commissioner A. Ravi Shankar plans to reduce fatal accidents by 50%, with 10 hotspots identified.

On an average the city of Visakhapatnam records about 300 fatal accident cases in a year and the number of injured is around 1,000.

Plans are afoot under the new Commissioner of Police A. Ravi Shankar to cut them down by over 50%. And to begin with, the police have identified about 10 hotspots, which record close to 80% of the total accidents.

In an interview with The Hindu, the Police Commissioner said that bringing down the total number of accidents and the fatalities by 50%, in the next one year, would be a challenging task.

In fatal accidents, it is not only that the people who lose their lives and an entire family is traumatised and affected, but every accident increases the burden on the State’s exchequer.

Giving details, Mr. Ravi Shankar said, in the 970-plus km NH stretch from Tada to Ichchapuram alone, on an average there are about 9,000 fatal accidents every year and about 27,000 are injured.

Of the 27,000 injured, about one-third who had suffered serious injuries die within 2 to 3 days. So this takes the total number of fatalities to around 18,000 per year.

Presuming that at least 50% are covered under the YSR Bima, the insurance payment from the State’s exchequer turns up to be around ₹450 crore. The incidental charges for every fatal accident is around ₹2,700, which includes ambulance charges for shifting the body to the mortuary and this amounts to around ₹4.8 crores and the cost of FIR that includes the manhours to serve notices on the accused is around ₹1.3 lakh per case, which will be around ₹234 crore. And all these are per annum, said Mr. Ravi Shankar, who had earlier served as Additional Director General of Road Safety and also as CEO of AarogyaSri.