‘Sleepy drivers also causing mishaps’

Even as the state has swung into action to prevent accidents occurring on the 95-km long Mumbai-Pune Expressway due to faults in designs of engineering, data from the state highway, the police said, reveals that accidents expressway occur not only due to faults in designs of engineering, but also because of drivers falling asleep while driving.

The state highway police data reveals that the Expressway is deadliest between 3 am to 8 am when many truck and bus drivers fall asleep and meet with accidents.

According to the state highway police data from January 2016 to February 2016, 280 accidents took place on the expressway of which 96 accidents were due to the driver going into median or going off road after falling asleep while driving. “The accidents are seen mostly with truck and bus drivers as they are working over time. Many tourists vehicles also meet with accidents because they are working over time to make more money,” a state highway official said.

The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) has recently taken many initiatives to make roads safer by tweaking the engineering designs.

To avoid vehicles dashing into each other MSRDC has already started installing steel wire ropes that act as crash barriers.

The wires will help hold back vehicles that could go out of control after crossing the median and prevent them from crashing into vehicles from the opposite direction.

The state highway officials are of the view that much of the accidents occur due to the drivers’ fault, including wrong side lane cutting, over speeding on ghat section and driving in the night-time, in spite of being sleepy.

“On many nights we have to tackle with more than one accidents occurring due to drivers falling asleep. For example, on January 31, 2016 we witnessed six truck drivers going off road between 3 am and 5 am due to being sleepy,” the state highway police official said.

The Save Life foundation NGO’s data between October 2012 and October 2014 reveals that 364 accidents on expressway occurred due to drivers falling asleep.

To counter this, a MSRDC bureaucrat said, “We need to construct such infrastructure for drivers to take timely breaks from time to time. Currently, there is no such infrastructure provision on the expressway.”