Six students, including four girls, were injured when an auto-rickshaw they were travelling in met with an accident at Srinagar under Gajuwaka Police Station limits, here on Wednesday.
As condition one of the injured one girls, who suffered head injury, turned critical she was shifted to a corporate hospital for further treatment. The other five injured have reportedly suffered minor injuries and being treated at a private hospital in Gajuwaka and are said to be out of danger.
All the students are in VIII to X standards and were proceeding to their school in the auto in which they regularly to to school, when the accident took place.
According to the police, the auto was overloaded and was in good speed. It was coming from Dibbapalem near Gangavaram and was proceeding to Srinagar area, when the auto driver lost control and rammed an electric pole and the auto overturned. The driver was also injured.
This was the sixth such incident involving autorickshaws ferrying school students under the Police Commissionerate this year. Fortunately none of the accidents was fatal but about 25 suffered injuries said ACP (Traffic) K. Prabhakar.
There are about 4,000 autos that ferry schoolchildren on a daily basis and 95 per cent of them are overloaded. “While only four are allowed in an auto each one carries at least seven to eight schoolchildren and at times even more if the children are from lower classes,” said Gajuwaka SHO Emmanuel Raju.
In all the six cases recorded, the cause of accident was almost similar such as overloading of autos over the prescribed norms, over speeding and rash and negligent driving. In two cases, the auto drivers were found in inebriated condition.
Accidents involving auto-rickshaws have been on the rise and the city police have been trying to reign in the erring drivers.
“We have been organising special drives as a part of efforts to check the accidents”, said ADCP (Traffic) K. Mahendra Patrudu.
As part of a special drive, the police seized as many as 328 auto-rickshaws on a single day recently. “Apart from the special drives we have also been organising special training classes to discipline the drivers. But the result has not been very encouraging,” said a senior traffic police officer.
