The truck that hit the ambulance at Saheed Nagar police station. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, March 24: A seventy-year-old patient had a lucky escape after an ambulance carrying him was hit by a truck at Acharya Vihar Square this morning.

The incident took place while the critically-ill patient was being shifted to a private hospital in the city from the government-run Capital Hospital. The truck was coming from Baramunda.

Though the patient, who was on oxygen, escaped without injury, his relative, who was sitting in the front seat of the vehicle, suffered severe injuries.

Police seized the truck and detained its driver.

In another accident, a youth died in a road mishap near Kalpana Square on Cuttack Road last night. The deceased, Siba Prasad Patnaik, 25, a resident of Unit-VIII, was driving his motorcycle when a bus hit him from behind. The bus dragged him up to a distance of 50 meters, leaving him badly injured. He was rushed to a nearby hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.

Following this mishap, hundreds of local residents staged a blockade on the road demanding immediate arrest of the bus driver.

“This road has become dangerous with a number of unplanned cuts in the median. Besides, the road is narrow, which creates difficulties for commuters,” said Harihar Jena, a local resident.

Residents blame the ongoing road expansion and construction of fly-over bridges for the increase in the number of accidents in the city. Statistics revealed that while there were 599 accidents in Bhubaneswar in 2011, the number went up to 625 in 2012. The number of accidents in 2013 was, however, 563. This year, there have so far been around 130 accidents in the city.

“Most of the times, construction agencies do not put signboards and barricades around the sites,” said Mohan Biswal, a city resident.

Though the police had enforced a restriction on entry of heavy vehicles in the city during busy hours, many residents allege that the norm is being floated every now and then. On the other hand, police officials said adequate traffic personnel were being deployed to manage traffic in the city. “We have asked private construction agencies to deploy adequate traffic marshals near the construction sites,” said assistant commissioner of police (traffic) Binod Das.