More Than 700 Lives Lost In 7 Years, Yamuna Expressway Is Turning Out To Be A Highway To Death

Speed is killing people in India. The two new expressways that connect Delhi with Lucknow and Agra are becoming a site of fatal accidents in which hundreds of people have lost their lives so far. According to reports, 700 people have been killed so far, since the expressway was thrown open for vehicular movement.?

The two roads, one starting from Greater Noida and the other from Lucknow converted at Agra and reduce the travel time from Delhi to Lucknow from eight hours to just five hours.

BCCL

But ever since it became operational, the Yamuna Expressway has made headlines regularly for wrong reasons, especially when it comes to safety.?

On Monday alone 29 lives were lost on the road when a UP government-run bus, carrying 46 people, travelling from Lucknow to Delhi fell into a canal on a stretch of the expressway near Agra. According to locals, it was the third bus accident at the spot.?

AFP

At least 77 people have been killed this year only in accidents on the 165-km expressway, according to RTI data accessed by NGO SaveLIFE Foundation.

The NGO said 703 lives were lost in 4,880 accidents between August 2012, when the expressway was opened for commercial operations, and January last year.

Another set of data accessed by Agra-based activist and lawyer Krishna Chand Jain from YEIDA via RTI had information until March last year.

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It showed 4,956 accidents were reported on the expressway since its inception until March last year, in which 718 people died and 7,671 were injured.

The RTI response Jain received detailed that 1,161 (almost 24 percent) of the accidents were caused due to over-speeding, while 595 (12 percent) were due to bursting of tyres and 235 (4.74 percent) due to fog.

"There was no detail on the cause of the remaining 2,965 accidents (59.82 percent cases), neither by YEIDA nor Jaypee Infratech, which has constructed the expressway," Jain, Secretary of NGO Agra Development Foundation, claimed.

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YEDIA has identified three "black spots" on the stretch between Greater Noida and Agra where rumble strips have been created to keep the driver awake in case they get drowsy.

"There's an urgent need to improve enforcement on our highways. This is not a one-off incident. In 2017, over 9,000 people have lost their lives in preventable bus crashes," SaveLIFE Foundation CEO Piyush Tewari said.

"The other urgent action required is on engineering issues. Most of our highways are missing crash barriers and other infrastructure measures that can prevent a crash from becoming fatal," Tewari said.