The Uttar Pradesh government has taken an initiative for diagnosis of the mishaps to uncover their root causes and enable authorities to chalk out strategies on that basis.
The decision comes after 41,746 road accidents, killing 22,595 people and injuring 28,541, took place in Uttar Pradesh in 2022.
Known as “Uttar Pradesh Road Crash Investigation Scheme”, it aims to make a scientific and analytical investigation mandatory in each case of road mishap involving death of three or more people.
Last year recorded an increase of 1,368 deaths than the fatalities reported in the state in 2021.
Principal secretary, transport, L Venkateshwar Lu issued a notification with regard to the new system after the Supreme Court-monitored committee on road safety recently asked all the states to come out with such an initiative. The new scheme aims at improving accuracy of accident reporting against a number of pre-defined parameters.
“The groundbreaking initiative aims to establish a more comprehensive and reliable system for investigation of road accidents, shifting away from the traditional practice of relying solely on police inquiries that are often not professional,” Additional Transport Commissioner, Road Safety, P.S. Satyarthi said.
Under the newly launched scheme, there will be a road crash investigation committee in every district comprising a traffic inspector or police officer not below the rank of an inspector, a PWD engineer, or a regional inspector (technical).
The assistant regional transport officer (enforcement) of the district will be the nodal officer for the implementation of this scheme in the district. In the commissionerate, deputy commissioner of police (Traffic) and in rest of the districts deputy superintendent of police (traffic) will be the associate officer of the nodal officer.
All the members of the road crash investigation committee will convene a meeting within five working days to finalise and accordingly sign the final crash investigation report after individually investigating the road accident using their expertise.
“Investigation under the scheme is mandatory in case a road crash results in three or more fatalities,” the notification says.
“Information about such a road accident in the district in which at least three people have died shall be made available to the members of the committee immediately by the police station in-charge of the accident site. It shall be the duty of the district police control room to immediately inform the members of the committee on receipt of such accident information,” it says.
According to the notification, the assistant regional transport officer (enforcement) shall prepare an action taken report for every quarter based on all the crash investigation reports from the said quarter.
The report shall be submitted within forty-five days from the end of the quarter and will include analysis of causal factors of various crashes.
Satyarthi said under the prevailing system of investigation, the circumstances mentioned by the police stations concerned for road accidents in their report may not be true because of lack of expertise on their part.
“In 80 per cent of the cases, road accidents are attributed to over-speeding and negligence by drivers. But we do not know how true this is unless we have a scientific investigation by experts. The new scheme, we hope, will reduce the likelihood of misrepresentation of causes of road accidents,” he said.
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