The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Highway accidents: no agency to probe causes

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, May 09, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Highway accidents: no agency to probe causes

By Marri Ramu

HYDERABAD, MAY 8. Last year, more than 9,000 lives were lost in road crashes. If the continuing dance of death on the State highways is any indication, another 10,000 would be crushed to death this year. But, believe it or not, the Government cannot do anything about this large-scale loss of life. Because, except for maintaining the frightening statistics, it simply does not make any effort to find out the causative factors for the mishaps!

The official machinery is unable to come out with a strategy to bring down these avoidable loss of lives, as there is no agency to analyse the exact reasons leading to these ghastly road crashes. Moreover, investigating into causes of accidents is nobody's business in the Government. `Since prevention and detection of crime is our prime job. Probing into causes of an accident is always of secondary importance to us," a police officer says.

And that raises the fundamental question. What remedial measures can the Government take when it does not know the reasons behind the mishaps? Whenever a fatal accident is reported, the local police would only focus on finding "who was at fault" rather than "why did it happen."

It is this reason why there is little feedback from the police on the causative factors and even if a conscientious cop compiles a detailed report on the circumstances that led to the accident, there is no `uniform agency' that would seriously examine the report and recommend remedial measures.

As far as police investigation is concerned, generally, two notions influence the probe into road mishaps - fault always lies with the bigger vehicle involved in accidents or charges are framed against the "surviving driver" of the vehicles. "Even if we precisely know that those killed in the mishap were at fault, we book cases against the surviving drivers because allegations of corruption would be levelled against us, if mistakes of the victims are pointed out," a police officer discloses. Thus, one cannot depend solely upon the findings of the police.

The State Highway Safety Authority Member-Secretary, M.V. Krishna Rao, asserts that there is no mechanism to analyse the 9,000-odd accidents per year in the State. "What we know is only the figures, but not the reasons," he admits. In some cases, human error could lead to an accident.

Ten years ago, the teenaged son of noted Ghazal singer, Jagjit Singh, was killed when he rammed his motorcycle into a stationary lorry. "In this case, legally you cannot fix charges against anybody."

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