652 accident-prone spots in HP; Kangra, Shimla top list

Ambika Sharma

Tribune News Service

Solan,October 23

As many as 652 black spots have been identified as places prone to accidents in the state with Kangra and Shimla districts having the maximum number of 95 and 87 such vulnerable spots respectively.

An analysis of various road traffic accidents in the state, undertaken by the 108 Emergency Services run by the GVK EMRI, has shown that a majority of the accidents occurred on these vulnerable spots. The study took into account the accidents occurring from April to September end.

There were 71 , 67, 61, 56, 54, 50, 51 and 43 black spots in Mandi, Solan, Chamba, Kullu, Sirmaur, Una, Hamirpur and Hamirpur districts, respectively. While there were barely nine such vulnerable spots in each tribal district of Kinnaur and Lahaul and Spiti, it was interesting to note that the number of accidents spots in district Sirmaur was much lesser than several other districts though the frequency of accidents was much higher here.

Out of total emergencies 44,177 are trauma vehicular related. The number of road accidents has been registering a rise with as against 3,934 accidents reported in 2011, there were 4,448 accidents in 2012, 4,862 in 2013, 6,764 in 2014, 6,865 in 2015 and 5,501 in this year till now. Likewise the number of accident victims had also risen from 5,663 in 2011 to 8,875 in 2015.

While various committees have attributed the accidents to factors like overspeeding, drunken driving, poor condition of roads, etc., the identification of black spots and placing signboard cautioning motorists appears to have done little to reduce the rate of accidents.

Mehul Sukumaran, State Head, GVK EMRI Himachal Pradesh says “Emergency arrives uninvited and sudden and generally anyone loses presence of mind and becomes panicky when an emergency strikes.” He appealed to the people to “be patient and wise to wait for a 108 ambulance instead of transporting the victim/patient through any other mode, where pre-hospital care would be totally missing.”

Despite the difficult terrain and widely scattered thinly populated areas, the average response time of mere 12 minutes 17 seconds in urban areas and 37 minutes 18 seconds in the rural has been recorded by the 108 ambulance services.