Blood spills on Palm Beach Road again, 4 die in two mishaps at Sanpada, Vashi

MUMBAI: Four men were killed in two accidents on Palm Beach Road at Vashi and Sanpada early on Friday while it was raining.
The first accident took place around 12.50am near Moraj Circle in Sanpada, where a speeding car with three occupants turned turtle and crashed into a tree on the divider. Two of them, Vireshwar Thakur (32) and Mahesh Dalvi (27), died.The third, Ajay Rathore, escaped with a fractured leg. “We are inquiring if the driver, Thakur, was drunk at the time of the accident,” said a Turbhe police official.
In the second accident, two vegetable wholesale traders, Shankar Ingale (45) and Sagar Shinde (30), were killed a little after 4am while they were going on a motorcycle towards the APMC market via Palm Beach Road. They were about to take a turn to exit the road near the Kopri crossroad, when a speeding Innova hit them headlong. “The car’s driver, Indra Gaikwad (23), has been arrested for rash driving,” said an official at the APMC police station.
In 2013 and 2014, fatalities on Palm Beach Road had reduced considerably, but Friday’s back-to-back mishaps are a reminder of how accident-prone the road has always been.
DCP (traffic) Arvind Salve told TOI that in the past few months several preventive measures have been taken along the accident prone 10-km stretch from Vashi to Belapur. These include installation of rumble strips, a new traffic signal at Nerul and crash barriers. “We have noticed that human error and speeding beyond the permissible limit of 60kmph are the main causes of road accidents here,” said Salve.
According to the Navi Mumbai traffic police, cases of drunk driving in the satellite city shot up by 84% in January-June this year compared to the corresponding period last year.
Earlier this week at the municipality’s general body meeting, a proposal to make a Rs3-crore pedestrian subway at Karave, Nerul, on Palm Beach Road was passed. As many as 17 lives have been lost in accidents on this spot in the last three years just because safe crossing is absent.