Plan to save 50% of road related deaths by 2025: Gadkari

Chennai, Feb 16 (PTI): The Road Transport Ministry hasrectified 2,500 black spots that caused accidents of the totalof 6,000 identified nationwide and has urged states tocooperate in reducing related deaths by 50 per cent by 2025,union minister Nitin Gadkari said on Tuesday.

The Minister also suggested that smart villages, in linewith smart cities, be developed to avoid migration of peoplefrom rural to urban areas, which, he claimed, was one of thereasons for the increase in accidents.

He was participating in an event, along with ChiefMinister K Palaniswami on 'Chennai Road Safety', organised byWorld Bank and Government of Tamil Nadu.

Gadkari said India accounted for the highest number ofaccidents in the world, one of the major reasons for whichwas poor road engineering and also detailed project report.

''In our country, every year about five lakh accidentstake place and 1.50 lakh people lose their lives....majorityof the victims are agedvbetween 18 and 45 '', he said.

He said the Ministry has already rectified 2,500 of theidentified 6,000 black spots ''We are in the process (to rectify the remaining).alreadythe World Bank and ADB Bank have sanctioned a loan of Rs14,000 crore and we are making improvements on the roads,particularly in removing the black spots'', he said.

Gadkari said the government has decided that the numberof fatalities should be halved before 2025, for which hesought the cooperation of state governments.

He said one of the reasons for the accidents was morenumber of people migrating from rural areas to metros, ''atleast 30 per cent of India's population,'' in search of jobs.

''Also, as a MSME minister, I am going to insisteverywhere that you need to develop every village (as smartvillages) not only smart cities we need to develop smartvillages, we need to stop this migration, without that wecannot solve the problem of urban areas and that is importantfor the country'', he said.

Gadkari said India was losing 3 to 5 per cent of GrossDomestic Product due to accidents.

He noted that a person could get a driving license inIndia very easily unlike in the United States ''It is also not good for me to tell you that when wereferred to the records of driving licenses, at least 30 percent of them were bogus and one person had 3-4 licenses'', hesaid.

''We have changed the system and with the help of theIncome Tax department, were able to take some action on thosepeople who had three-four driving licenses'', he said.

The Minister urged the Tamil Nadu government to make useof water transport through the use of hovercraft andmotorboats as they were 'economically viable'.

''Water transport is very important. When I was shippingMinister I wanted to start water transport between Chennai andKannyakumari...there are lot of new technologies availablelike amphibious sea plane... I request the Chief Minister togive priority to water transport'', he said.

Earlier, Palaniswami said the state government hasidentified black spots that caused accidents and steps werebeing taken to remove them, besides providing speedy treatmentto the injured and also creating awareness on road safetyamong students As a result, the number of accident related deathsdecreased from 17,218 in 2016 to 8,060 by end of 2020.

The CM said the state had received two awards from theRoad Transport Ministry for the year 2017-18 and 2018-19 forits measures on road safety.

He said his government would take all initiatives toensure there was nil accident related deaths in the state.

The CM also thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi andGadkari for allocating Rs 1 lakh crore for projects related toroad development in the 2021-22 budget.