Mumbai-Pune Expressway is becoming a killer road as many accidents involving heavy vehicles and cars are taking place mostly during weekends. Despite frequent accidents, the 94.5 km stretch is becoming a death trap to passengers travelling in this route. In between 2009-2015, 125 people have been killed on an average and it is a bad track record for a fast track road catering to the needs of people en route to various places in Maharashtra.
There are too many accidents in Mumbai-Pune expressway. The main reasons for such accidents are rash driving, bad state of the roads and failure to follow traffic rules. The license allotting authorities should use more stringent tests before giving license to the drivers. Expressway roads are prone to accidents in the Khalapur town in Raigad district part of expressway has become a killer way because of over speeding. It is high time to put brakes on speed by making speed breakers at focal points. Speed thrills these erring drivers and it kills the people as well in the process.
Apart from speed, the lane cutting caused most of these accidents. The first lane, one near the divider is for overtaking. The second lane is for light vehicles and the third lane is for buses and other heavy vehicles. However, most of the motorists do not follow the rules.
Pune-Mumbai expressway is the focal point for the accidents as there is no restriction for speed. There is no speed limit as tested by Police with the help of speed guns. Medical facilities in this route are inadequate and that causes accidental deaths more. After too many accidents the authorities kept only four ambulances for a full stretch of nearly 100 kms. Police have to apply more stringent measures to control over speed. Even parked vehicles are falling prey to such gruesome accidents. More speed breakers should be placed at focal points to curtail speed. After all the drivers are playing with the lives of road users passing through the way.
The authorities, who collect exorbitant toll-fee should take care to curtail accidents as well by regular picketing by police and levying fine on erring drivers resorting to over speed. Alcohol Breath Analysers (ABA) are to be used in all focal points to make sure drunk driving is curtailed to the minimum. It is one more case of negligence and overtaking caused a major accident. Time tested methods will have to applied and see that the accident rate reduced to almost negligible in this particular route. Both RTO and the traffic police need to play a bigger role in this route to prevent gruesome accidents.
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
