‘Road mishaps in state not on rise’

Apr 01, 2012 - Umesh Mohite |

mumbai

Tags:

R.R. Patil

Even as home minister R.R. Patil denied that road accidents in the Maharashtra have been on rise, he agreed that around 61,248 road accident deaths were reported in the state in the last five years.
Mr Patil was replying to a star question in the legislative council. Rash driving, road cutting, drunk driving, overloading of vehicles are major factors that lead to mishaps. Natural factors such as incessant rains, fog, landslides and bad roads also cause accidents.
In August 2009, the highway safety police was given the authority to take action against vehicles that failed to abide the traffic rules. Since then, more than 11 lakh cases have been recorded and fine more than `13 crore has been recovered.
MLCs Dr Deepak Sawant, Parshuram Upparkar and others raised the issue saying that said that as many as 7,104 accidents in the last three years were caused by drivers under the influence of alcohol.
Although Mr Patil refuted the claim, he confirmed that since 2008 till February 2012, there were 1,540 accidents caused while under the influence of alcohol. He further stated that police has been provided with breath analysers, which help in identifying drunk drivers.
Since 2008, the police has charged around 1,69,983 people for driving while under the influence of alcohol. Around 8,700 cases of drunken driving are pending before various courts in the state, Mr Patil said.

THIS STORY ON TWITTER

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/139283" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-3a13a17d880104843386d4e22f963fb3" value="form-3a13a17d880104843386d4e22f963fb3" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="85748161" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>