Ninety-five per cent of the road accidents on Goa's roads at night occur because of drunken driving, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said Friday.
The Chief Minister also expressed concern about the loss of lives in road accidents after dark, in wake of the death of four persons, who were in an SUV which broke a barricade and fell off a major road bridge in South Goa early Thursday.
"If you check the records of accidents at night, I think almost 95 per cent of the accidents are because of drinking," Sawant told reporters here. He added that the government would consider making road safety and traffic rules even stricter by amending the existing laws, in a bid to curb road accidents.
"Drunk driving should stop 100 per cent in the state. We need to take steps. What happens actually is offenders are fined small amounts and let go of. This will not do," the Chief Minister said. "We might have to tweak the new law again to deter drunk driving completely," Sawant said.
In 2020, official analysis of road accidents revealed that Goa has an accident rate of nearly 109 for every one lakh residents. The national average for road accidents in comparison stands at 27.6 per cent for every one lakh persons.
Published 29 July 2022, 20:50 IST