Speed management in the state is now to be done considering several micro factors and not by just taking in account the category of roads. As reported earlier, the state transport department along with experts from IIT Kharagpur are to develop ‘safe corridors’ to curb road accidents and fatalities related to it. The department has adopted a policy on road safety named as ‘Speed Management for Enhancing Road Safety in West Bengal: Policy Interventions and Roadmap,” that was unveiled by the transport minister, Snehahsis Chakraborty today.
The government has adopted policies like ‘Safe System Approach’ giving more emphasis on speed management for reducing road accident fatalities arising out of it. “To implement the policy, some of the accidentprone roads named as ‘black spots’ have been identified,” informed the minister. Mr Chakraborty said, “In the days to come, IIT Kharagpur will work on one or two roads that are accident prone.
They would help in implementing the required road safety measures on those stretches and help in turning them into safe corridors. The experimental works on the subject would be done in the days to come. If those measures help in minimizing the accidents, the measures would then be extended to other vulnerable stretches as well to curb fatalities.”
According to professor Maitra, the department is to conduct safe speed audits on all roads in a phased manner for deciding the safe speed not only considering road and traffic engineering perspective but also considering human tolerance criteria.