File picture of a roadblock in protest against an accident on the Cuttack-Paradip state highway

Paradip, Sept. 9: The 90km-long Cuttack-Paradip state highway has turned into almost a death trap for motorists and pedestrians with the busy stretch accounting for as many as 223 human fatalities and 818 accidents in the past three years.

According to official reports, apart from the deceased — mostly pedestrians, cyclists and motor cyclists — 773 people were injured, while 392 of them became physically challenged following road accidents on the highway that is the main connectivity between Bhubaneswar and Paradip port.

Unregulated vehicular traffic, violation of the road safety norms and unauthorised roadside parking have contributed to the rise in the mishaps.

Thickly populated villages, besides educational institutions, busy marketplaces and vegetable mandis, are located by the side of the highway. As a result, these areas have emerged as accident-prone zones, said a road safety activist, Manoj Kumar Satapathy.

Jagatsinghpur collector Satya Kumar Mallick said: “The district administration has asked the roads transport department to enforce the basic road safety measures in accident-prone zones on the highway. The department has also been directed to install street lights and erect signboards and traffic signals in the accident-prone areas.”

“The road transport office has also been directed to intensify drive to book cases of goods carriers carrying people. It has been asked to carry out drive to check the fitness of vehicles plying on road. Both police and road transport officials were directed to sternly deal with unauthorised roadside parking,” he said.

Apart from initiating the road safety measures, crackdown on reckless driving is the need of the hour to bring down the incidence of road accidents. These apart, the accident rate could be brought down if the highway is upgraded to double-lane, said Satpathy.

The highway has come under roadside encroachment at strategic traffic junctions. The drivers are parking their vehicles on roadside instead of at the assigned lay-bys. The majority of accidents recorded in recent past were the result of vehicles hitting the parked ones. Over-speeding and drunken driving also attributed to a spurt in the road mishaps.

Road safety campaigners attributed the non-installation of traffic signals, badly maintained vehicles and reckless driving to the spurt in road accidents.

It has also been found that vehicles that meet with accidents are ill maintained and are bereft of physical fitness. Besides, goods carriers carrying people has become a routine ritual.