15 black spots identified in Chandigarh in linewith road ministry’s guidelines

Following the new guidelines of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH), the traffic police have identified 15 black spots in the city, the list of which has been forwarded to the Institute of Road Traffic Education, (IRTE), New Delhi, to provide long-term solutions.

The new guidelines define a black spot as the area on a 500-metre stretch where there have either been five road accidents or 10 fatalities over a period of three years. Earlier the traffic police had identified 11 black spots with only the criterion of maximum number of accidents that took place on a particular stretch.

However, most of the newly identified 15 black spots are on the periphery of the city, two of them being at rotaries (see box). The traffic police have also written to the UT administration for immediate action for the top nine black spots.

Speaking about why accidents happened at the top two intersections — Airport light point to CRPF campus, Hallomajra, and Poultry Farm chowk to BSNL turn — deputy superintendent of police (DSP, road safety) Jaswinder Singh said the intersections are situated near the various colonies in the Industrial Area, where a lot of traffic comprises pedestrians and cyclists. “We are organising awareness workshops to ensure cyclists drive on cycle tracks and pedestrians cross the road only over the zebra crossing after looking both ways.”

CORRECTION TO BEGIN AT SECTOR 46/47/48/49 LIGHT POINT

Singh said the road safety team of the traffic police has already visited the Sector 46/47/48/49 roundabout to find out short term measures to fix the black spot there. “We have written to the UT administration to construct a rotary at this intersection, the drawings for which are being prepared. In the meantime, the traffic police are studying makeshift solutions to check accidents here. This intersection will be treated as a pilot project and the solutions proposed here will be adopted at other intersections.”

Besides placing barricades at the intersection at night to get drivers to slow down, the traffic police have also written to the administration to put speed breakers etc here to check speeding to jump red lights, which has turned out to be the main reason for accidents here.

SIGNAGES, BLINKERS SOON

As per MORTH guidelines, the black spots will be tagged with signages of ‘accident-prone’, a solar-powered blinker and rumble strips. Senior officials of the UT engineering department, on the condition of anonymity, said the signages were ready and will be installed soon after a design update.