Bhubaneswar: With identification of at least 209 black spots prone to road mishaps across the state, Odisha government has asked the engineers of National Highways and Works Department to ensure implementation of short-term measures for road safety by end of December.
The direction in this regard was issued yesterday by chief secretary A P Padhi while reviewing measures taken to reduce road accidents. Around 4,000 people die in road accidents every year in the state.
The state government has implemented a special road safety rule to reduce road accidents. The rule has been implemented with an aim to reduce 20 per cent major road accidents by the year 2020, Padhi said.
Padhi said in an effort to reduce accidents, the black spots have been unidentified in different roads of the state in the first phase. While around 120 black spots have been identified on national highways, 64 places are located on state highways. Main District Road (MDR) have 15 such black spots and 9 on other district roads (ODR) and 1 on urban road.
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Padhi said as short-term initiative, it has been decided to install rumblers, guardwall, signals, signage boards and cautionary signs on the roads.
Similarly, the long-term initiatives included the expansion of road, under-pass service road, flyover construction, parallelization of road and expansion of blind curve on the road. All these measures will be place by March 2018 in phases, the chief secretary said.