‘Road crash deaths in UP: 41% of fatalities due to speeding’ | Latest News Delhi

Sixty-five per cent of two-wheelers, half of the light motor vehicles, and over a third of buses were found speeding in five crash-prone districts of Uttar Pradesh, a report released on Thursday, revealed.

The study by the SaveLife Foundation and IIT Kanpur, was conducted to understand the instances of speeding in the state and how to curb it, as road fatalities are considerably higher in Uttar Pradesh. UP is incidentally the state with the highest number of road crash victims according to the 2022 (latest) nation-wide data.

Going by the 2022 figures, 22,595 persons died as a result of road crashes in UP with speeding alone contributing to 9,297 fatalities or 41% of the total road crash deaths. A significant number of such deaths (over 3,700) occurred on national highways.

Alarmingly, the study found that 75.8% of two-wheelers were speeding on national highways and 63.9% on state highways near schools in four districts. Additionally, over 80% of two-wheelers, light motor vehicles (LMVs), and buses were found to be exceeding the 25 km/h speed limit in all school zones.

Among the more striking findings of the study was that over 85% of the two-wheelers and over half of the LMVs were found speeding in Bareilly, high speeding among 60% of LMVs were observed in Prayagraj’s Allahabad-Bypass expressway, and 86% buses were speeding on the Yamuna Expressway.

Speaking at the launch of the report, founder and CEO of SaveLIFE Foundation, Piyush Tewari, urged the government to introduce a penalty for speeding by two-wheelers, which is currently missing under the Motor Vehicles Act.

Lacunae in governance, enforcement

The study noted that despite these high instances of violation, enforcement is currently restricted by limited manpower and takes place in limited time frames rather than round the clock.

“This is especially evident on highways, where enforcement is usually conducted by the state police as well as the transport department. Uttar Pradesh does not have a designated state highway police. Due to limited manpower, the level of enforcement across highways remains low. The enhancement of manpower and the adoption of technology for enforcement is, therefore, necessary,” the authors noted. Further, the study noted that posted speed limits within some stretches of roads had different speed limits.

“For example, the Agra-Lucknow Expressway passes through Unnao and Kannauj, two adjacent districts. Yet, the speed limits for two-wheelers and HMVs differed for both districts (60 km/h for Unnao and 80 km/h for Kannauj),” the authors cited as an example.

Currently, existing speed regulations do not adequately factor in the diverse conditions that prevail on different roads, such as road geometry, built up characteristics, and road user characteristics, the report added.

The data collected during the exercise also revealed that there was significant speeding amongst two-wheelers and LMVs near school zones on national and state highways. In addition, the proportion of vehicles exceeding the speed limit at locations that were not blackspots was higher than that of vehicles exceeding the speed limit at blackspot locations. “This revealed that speed-curbing measures should not be restricted to blackspots,” the authors added.

To ensure safety, the authors of the report said that safe speed limits need to be set by sectional characteristics of the road as opposed to establishing a single speed limit for a specific category or hierarchy of the road following the World Health Organisation methodology of 2023. The experts also argued that regional transport offices, local governments, and traffic police be also consulted for setting these road-specific speed limits.

Further, the authors argued for the introduction of electronic enforcement and design interventions to gradually lower vehicle speeds in approach areas of intersections, interchanges, school zones, or other crash-vulnerable areas.

Scope of study

This study included surveys in Kanpur Nagar from the centre, Agra from the west, Bareilly from the north, Gorakhpur from the east, and Prayagraj from the south. Within each district, major corridors of interest were shortlisted by reviewing the list of the blackspots identified from crashes between 2019 and 2021, and the average free flow speeds estimated using a third-party speed API (Application Programming Interface) from global private firm TomTom.

Further for each district, three corridors of different functional classes were selected. Further five to six sites were selected among those corridors based on built environment characteristics—number of lanes, dividers, roadside features, traffic calming features and historical crash occurrences.