Sharp drop in road mishaps

• Decline attributed to implementation of Pancha Sutras by SP Ashok Kumar
• So far, 983 road accidents registered in 2018 while the figure was 2,076 in 2017

Anantapur: Wearing helmets, buckling up seat belts, avoiding mobile phone driving, over-loading of vehicles and drunken driving and speed control of vehicles are some of the Supreme Court directives which G V G Ashok Kumar has been implementing ever since he took over as District Superintendent of Police (SP) with the objective of minimising road mishaps. 

Dubbed as Pancha Sutras, Ashok Kumar had in the first instance motivated the police officials to strictly execute the Sutras for bringing down the magnitude of road accidents and accordingly road safety teams, Blue Colt and Rakshak teams and the local police has been fanned out into different police sub-divisions and vulnerable spots and accident-prone areas to strictly implement the road safety rules. 

Concerned at the increasing road accidents particularly on the state and national highways, special drives to check violation of rules had been launched resulting in traffic police filing as many as 7,000 cases per week on traffic offenders.

The strict implementation of Pancha Sutras has resulted in a drastic decline in road mishaps. 

According to the statistics provided by the traffic cops, the road accidents dropped from 2,166 mishaps in 2016 to just 983 so far in 2018, which is almost one third of the 2016 figures. 

In 2017, the number of road accidents reported were 2,076. After Ashok Kumar took over as SP a year ago, he had seen to it to bring down death and accident rate by following a multi-pronged strategy involving police officials, general public and motor vehicle drivers. 

Speaking to The Hans India, the SP revealed that not only were traffic offenders penalised but were subjected to counselling through a power point presentation explaining the ramifications of a road accidents and how a bread winner can be lost subjecting an entire family to hopelessness. 

The cops policing the highways were trained on the effective golden hour management when the accident victims linger between life and death. 

Efforts are being made to further bring down road accidents by maintaining the momentum created by the execution of Pancha Sutras.