'Make scientific investigations of accidents mandatory'

With incidents of road accidents on the rise, Congress MP T Subbarami Reddy on Monday demanded that there should be a mandatory scientific investigation on the pattern of mishaps like it is done in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Raising the issue in Zero Hour in Rajya Sabha, he said there is a need to constitute a Committee of Experts to go into this issue and suggest corrective measures.

"Bus accidents happen very frequently on our roads claiming innocent lives. Two days ago, an accident occurred at Yamuna Expressway killing 29 persons and injuring 23 persons. The Yamuna Expressway is now called the Killing Expressway because of such frequent accidents. Then, just two weeks back, 44 people had died as the bus skid off the road in Kullu, Himachal Pradesh, while taking a short bend," he said.

He said over 11,000 people die every year in bus accidents and in Uttar Pradesh alone, 1,406 deaths were reported in 2017, and 1,684 deaths were reported in 2018.

He said primary causes of accidents are short bends, potholes, boulders not removed, missing traffic signs, over-speeding, wrong designs of road, weak pavement, distressed bridges, faulty engineering of vehicles, lack of safety measures, drunk driving and fatigue in drivers.

"There should be a scientific investigation into such incidents. I would like to suggest that there should be a mandatory scientific investigation on the pattern of these accidents, like it is done in Germany, the UK and the US. But, the state governments have no such system in place," he said.