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Supreme Court summons Home Secretary

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday directed the personal appearance of the Tamil Nadu Home Secretary on January 28, 2008, for the State’s failure to file its response to a public interest litigation petition seeking directions to the Centre and States for improving road condition, infrastructure, traffic laws, medical facilities and making enforcement effective.

A Bench of Justice H.K. Sema and Justice V.S. Sirpurkar summoned the Home Secretary after counsel Prashant Bhushan, appearing for ‘Common Cause,’ informed it that Tamil Nadu was yet to file its response to the petitioner’s suggestions.

He cited a recent newspaper report to show that Tamil Nadu recorded the highest number of road accidents in 2005.

The Bench, after perusing the report, took a serious view of the State not filing its response. It said, “road accidents kill nearly 280 people every day in India. While Delhi tops among the metros, the National Crime Records Bureau statistics for 2005 show that among the States, Tamil Nadu had the highest casualties (13,961), followed by Andhra Pradesh (10,944), Maharashtra (10,613), UP (9,860) and Karnataka (6,876). Tamil Nadu and Andhra together have, in fact, reported more than one-fourth of total road accident deaths in the country.”

The petitioner said the objective was to remove serious shortcomings or inadequacies in road safety measures so as to minimise deaths and injuries.

Poor road condition in most parts of the country was the major cause of road accidents.

Development of roads with medians and rectification of sight distance at blind corners was very important in reducing accidents.

Roads need to have divided lanes with obstructions installed to reduce the glare of vehicle headlights coming from opposite direction.

It said speed governors should be mandatory for commercial vehicles like trucks and it should be effectively enforced.

Speed-breakers should be properly marked so that drivers could see them from a distance and reduce the speed of vehicle.

The petition suggested installation of video-recording facility at signals or any section of roads, which were prone to accidents.

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