India’s National Highways still have 215 black spots

These black spots are caused by poor road engineering design and contribute in road accidents.

You need to be more careful while driving on Indian roads even on the National Highways (NHs). The Indian Minister for Transport Mr. Nitin Gadkari on Monday accepted in the Parliament that there still exist 215 black spots on the roads falling under the jurisdiction of National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). However, he emphasized that the work for rectification is in progress.

These ‘black spots’ were first identified in a study ‘Integrated Road Accident Database (IRAD)’ funded by the World Bank from the year 2011 to 2014. In the study a total of 789 black spots were identified out of which maximum 660 were on the roads management by NHAI while 129 were on the roads under the jurisdiction of the state governments. Though the minister informed that 395 black spots of NHAI were rectified but he could not provide any information about rectification of the black spots on the roads managed by the state governments. NHAI, an agency under the Union Ministry of Transport and Highways, is responsible for inter-state roads in India with existing length of about 1,32,449 km which is just 2 percent of the total road network in the country. However, these roads carry about 40 percent of the India’s total traffic load.

According to the data presented by the minister in the Parliament, during January – September 2019, about 1.13 lakh people lost their lives while 3.45 lakh were injured in 3.39 lakh road accidents. In comparison to the previous year, the number of accidents were down by 2.2 percent but fatalities increased by 0.2 percent.