1,071 pedestrians killed in 3 years

Bengaluru still has a long way to go as a city of pedestrian-friendly roads. For, there are challenges galore for walkers on every road in the city.

Though statistics of pedestrian deaths on city roads is not on the rise since 2014, the bad road engineering continues to haunt pedestrians.

In 2012, a total of 358 pedestrians were killed and 1,514 sustained injuries. The number of deaths rose to 382 in 2013. Last year, the city recorded 331 pedestrian deaths with 1,334 receiving injuries.

Traffic police claim to have conducted a study to track the black spots causing highest number of pedestrian deaths in the city. However, several months into this study, change in road engineering is going on at a snail's pace.

Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic and Security) B Dayananda reasons that such changes require equal participation from civic agencies.  

“We had identified seven major junctions which were witnessing more number of pedestrian deaths. These blackspots were shared with the civic agencies, with details about measures to be taken. The intention was to reduce the man-vehicle conflicts in these junctions.” 

According to Dayananda, at some junctions the traffic police themselves have introduced quick measures such as erecting footpath barricades and cones at crucial junctions to avoid both pedestrians and motorists from entering into each others’ territories.

“However, full-time measures will have to be implemented by the civic agencies,” he says. Besides, jurisdictional traffic police inspectors have been writing to various civic agencies for removal of hawkers, garbage and electric transformers from footpaths.

One of the seven junctions spotted by the traffic police include Kempapura junction, where a reckless water tanker driver mowed down pedestrians crossing the junction. Dayanand informs that on Outer Ring Road (Hebbal till KR Puram), 23 locations were identified for taking up pedestrian-friendly measures, including skywalks.

The other junctions identified by the traffic police are – Lalbagh West, Havanoor Circle in Basaveshwaranagar, Madiwala Junction (in front of Madiwala police station), the Junction before the Nimhans signal after Lalbagh gate and Trinity junction on MG Road.

“The ORR between Hebbal and KR Puram has no pedestrian crossing measures and Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) has already started working on pedestrian crossing measures. The other important stretch is on Hosur Road, from Silk Board to Electronic City. A couple of years back, this stretch had recorded 22 deaths.

The median grills are of average height and pedestrians either jump the grill or sneak through two grills. On our request, the National Highways Authority has taken up the work to raise the height of the grills,” says the traffic police topbrass. 

Apart from these measures, the traffic police have also started reworking on the time for pedestrian crossing at major signals. At present, certain select traffic signals have a maximum of 30 seconds time for pedestrian crossing.  

“With an increase in the flow of pedestrians at some junctions, the timing needs to rearranged. The pattern of pedestrian flow at some vital junctions is being studied and soon revised time will be set,” informs an official at the Traffic Management Centre.