Road deaths drop by 18.5% in Prakasam

Ongole: District Collector P Raja Babu expressed satisfaction that steps taken to prevent road accidents are yielding good results, as district SP V Harshavardhan Raju informed that road accident deaths fell by 18.5 percent from January to July this year compared to the same period last year.

The collector chaired the District Road Safety Committee meeting at the Collectorate here on Tuesday. SP was also present in the meeting. DTC R Suseela presented a report on the action taken on points discussed in the previous meeting. Speaking at the meeting, the collector said that he and the SP recently visited accident-prone spots in Ongole city, Addanki and Santhamaguluru.

SP Harshavardhan Raju said that road accidents also came down by 3.5 per cent and officials are now responding to accidents within an average of eight minutes. He further informed that a fine of Rs 2.38 crore was imposed on 39182 vehicle rule violators in seven months, and Rs 1.34 crore has been collected so far. He said that over 1869 persons caught driving under the influence of alcohol were fined more than Rs 1 crore, and 67 of them were sent to jail. He added that over 9,000 illegally fitted LED lights were removed from vehicles by the police and transport staff.