April 6: Slow-moving vehicles, illegally parked trucks and multiple crossovers formed by modifying the median strip have made Durgapur Expressway an accident corridor, the National Highways Authority of India has said.

The 65km expressway between Dankuni and Palsit - a part of NH2 - has recently been in the news for accidents.

Last October, Abhishek Banerjee, Trinamul MP and Mamata Banerjee's nephew, was injured in an accident near Singur.

On March 7, folk singer Kalikaprasad Bhattacharjee died in an accident near Gurap.

A fortnight later, a family of seven was crushed under a tanker on the outskirts of Burdwan.

"This road has been built as a high-speed corridor. We have checked... there is no defect in the road engineering," Lt Col A. Handique, the NHAI's project director in charge of Durgapur Expressway, said. "Slow-moving vehicles like autos, totos and cycle-vans cause all the problems."

The state administration and police have to sort out such issues, he said.

After scanning the expressway many times over the past few months, NHAI engineers have found that truckers park their vehicles along the road instead of using the lay-bys.

This is most prominent in Dankuni, Chanditala, Gopalpur and near the Dhanekhali crossing.

Long queues of parked trucks along the road near dhabas pose a risk to speeding vehicles, especially at night, an NHAI official said. And slow-moving vehicles worsen the situation, he said.

"Vanos carrying goods, including cement bags, are a regular sight between Nawab Haat More and Ullash More in Burdwan," Prasanta Mukherjee of Burdwan said.

"These vehicles crawl on the road that is supposed to be a speed corridor," Mukherjee, who frequently travels between Burdwan and Calcutta, said.

Road engineering and design experts said slow-moving vehicles pose a risk to speeding vehicles while making the expressway prone to accidents.

"Any broad deviation from the average traffic speed on a speed corridor increases the risk of accidents," Bhargab Maitra, who teaches transport economics at IIT Kharagpur, said.

The risk factor would be multiplied manifold when vehicles move at varying speeds on such roads, he said.

IIT Kharagpur has done a black spot analysis to identify accident-prone pockets on the expressway.

Autos, vanos and other slow-moving vehicles are considered "vulnerable road users" because they lack the protective shield of a car or an SUV or a truck, Maitra said.

"The chances of survival of those travelling in such slow-moving vehicles depend largely on the speed at which they are hit in an accident. In the case of Durgapur Expressway, the chances are minimal," he said.

Moving trucks create powerful air disturbance leaving slow-moving vehicles unstable while overtaking them, many road transport experts said.

Also, trucks might be forced to swerve to save such vehicles and in the process hit the divider or other vehicles, an expert said.

"In many places on the expressway, the hollow area between the flanks has been filled to help illegal crossovers," an NHAI official said.

"Makeshift roads have been built around these points to bring traffic from adjoining areas to the expressway."

Many motorists said designated crossovers were few and far between on the expressway.

The district administrative officials of Hooghly and Burdwan have met NHAI officials over the past few weeks to work out ways to reduce the number of accidents on Durgapur Expressway.