Road accidents reduced by over 7 pc in 2019: Himachal DGP

The number of road accidents in Himachal Pradesh reduced by more than seven per cent in 2019 as compared to 2018, state's director general of police (DGP) Sitaram Mardi said on Thursday. This year, the state police will adopt the EEE (educating, engineering, enforcement) to further reduce the number of accidents in the hill-state, he said.

Talking to the media, the DGP said that a total of 2,897 road accidents took place in 2019 as compared to 3,118 in 2018. The number of deaths too reduced from 1,208 in 2018 to 1,109 in 2019 while the number of injured dropped to 4,842 in 2019 from 5,551 in 2018.

The DGP attributed the reduction in accidents to the strict action against traffic violators which included recommendations to concerned authorities to cancel their driving licences. The action proved as deterrent to rash and negligent driving which resulted in less road accidents, he added. The priority of the state police in 2020 will be to save more lives by further reducing the road accidents, he said.

Elaborating on the EEE policy, he said the public would be educated on road safety through various means and engineering of accident prone roads would be done by identifying black spots and recommending the PWD to correct them.  Enforcement of traffic laws by fining the traffic violators will continue, he added.