Lucknow, Mar 2: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has urged officials to implement extensive measures aimed at decreasing road accidents.
He highlighted the importance of constructing hospitals adjacent to expressways, akin to food plazas, to ensure prompt medical assistance for accident victims.
The chief minister provided these instructions during a meeting of the State Road Safety Council attended by ministers, senior bureaucrats, divisional commissioners, district magistrates, police commissioners, and superintendents of police.
An official statement revealed that Uttar Pradesh saw 46,052 road accidents in 2024, resulting in 34,600 injuries and over 24,000 fatalities, which Adityanath described as “extremely tragic.” He emphasized the necessity of multi-departmental collaboration to mitigate accidents and ordered officials to identify and address hazardous areas across the state’s roadways.
Every expressway should have hospitals on both sides, similar to food plazas, with trauma centers, ambulances, and trained personnel stationed at divisional headquarters hospitals, he asserted.
In 2024, the highest number of fatalities occurred in 20 districts, including Hardoi, Mathura, Agra, Lucknow, and Kanpur, which contributed to 42 percent of the total road deaths in the state, according to Adityanath. He instructed officials to investigate the causes of accidents and raise awareness about road safety, advocating for monthly district-level meetings and quarterly divisional meetings.
Adityanath expressed concern that six divisions—Ayodhya, Prayagraj, Varanasi, Azamgarh, Saharanpur, and Agra—held only one meeting last year.
He also recommended strict enforcement against over-speeding, drunk driving, wrong-way driving, running red lights, and using mobile phones while driving. He called for the removal of unauthorized vehicles, overloaded trucks, and illegal buses from the roads.
Additionally, he suggested closing liquor shops along highways and reducing the size of oversized advertisement hoardings.
Traffic rules should be integrated into the curriculum of Basic and Secondary Education Departments, while schools and colleges must organize road safety awareness initiatives, he stated.
He emphasized the need to prioritize the verification of all e-rickshaw drivers to prevent underage driving.
Furthermore, he instructed that the number of cranes, patrol vehicles, and ambulances on expressways and highways be increased, and that CCTV cameras be installed on all 93 National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) roads in the state, as currently, only four are equipped with cameras. (PTI)
