PWD, traffic police to take steps to prevent road accidents in Delhi

The Delhi government has asked the PWD and traffic police to conduct joint inspections to gauge the need for new signage and other measures to prevent road accidents in the city.

The government's home department has directed the public works department and the traffic police to submit a consolidated report within a month.

According to an order issued last week, PWD's superintendent engineers and traffic police officers will conduct such inspections in their respective jurisdictions in a coordinated manner.

During the inspection, officials will identify such road stretches where signage are required to be installed so that motorists get proper guidance, an official said.

The official said that steps would also be taken to identify faulty signage so that they do not lead to road accidents.

In 2017, a study on 14 major stretches had found that faulty signage may actually be behind traffic violations and the resulting accidents. Nearly 70 per cent of such signs are wrongly designed and placed, it had also found.

In the national capital, the Delhi PWD, which maintains around 1,260-km roads, is responsible for roads over 60-metre in width while roads less than 60-metre wide broadly fall under the jurisdictions of civic bodies.