The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Road safety clubs on highways mooted

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Dec 14, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Road safety clubs on highways mooted

N. Rahul

Move aimed at curbing accidents

HYDERABAD: The State government will shortly start road safety clubs along highways in a bid to prevent road accidents and rush help to accident victims.

The membership of the clubs would comprise people living in villages that straddle the highways. A specific task that the clubs were expected to perform was to alert excise and transport officials about sale of liquor in their vicinities. The government hopes to close down the sales points with their assistance. The members would also be trained in first-aid.

Training material

Transport Commissioner Poonam Malakondaiah said the department was preparing training material to be circulated to members in the form of a booklet. She said the clubs were contemplated in continuation of a drive to check accidents by cracking down on illicit bus operations and overloaded transport and non-transport vehicles. “The drive has yielded results as a decreasing trend in accidents is witnessed for the last two months,” she said.

In 42,855 road accidents last year, about 12,000 people were killed and 60,000 injured across the State, she also said.

The department will also take up with Medical and Health Department a campaign seeking cooperation of private hospitals in treating accident victims. The focus would be on creating awareness about Section 134 of Motor Vehicles Act which makes it obligatory on the part of every registered medical practitioner or doctor on duty in any hospital to attend to injured persons without waiting for any procedural formalities.

The public would be urged to file cases against doctors if the latter turned away the injured. The doctors were liable to three months imprisonment or fine of Rs. 500 or both if they were found guilty.

Ms. Malakondaiah assured that the government would not force people shifting the injured to hospitals to stand as witness in courts.

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