Bhubaneswar: As many as 27,167 persons were killed in road accidents in the state over the last five years, at an annual average of 5,433 deaths, while 50,041 persons were injured during the same period, Commerce and Transport Minister Bibhuti Bhusan Jena told the Odisha Assembly, Friday.
The Supreme Court Committee on Road Safety is monitoring road safety activities in the state on a regular basis. “Road safety is a high-priority area for the government, and we are taking a number of initiatives to reduce accidents,” the minister said in a written reply. The year 2024, with 6,142 deaths, recorded the highest number of fatalities due to road accidents.
The government has taken a series of measures to curb drunken driving, unfit vehicles, driving without a license, and to improve traffic management, the minister added. The rising fatality graph has become a cause of grave concern, especially given the Supreme Court’s earlier directive to states and Union territories to reduce road fatalities by 10 per cent annually. The road safety committees constituted across the country had also directed states to reduce fatalities by 50 per cent by 2020, taking the year 2014 as the base year. To reduce the rate of road accidents, the state government has launched a series of multi-layered initiatives.
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These include community-level dialogues under the banner of ‘Cha Au Charcha’ near accident-prone zones, training of Sahayaks and Raahveers as first responders, awareness sessions for schoolchildren to nurture them as future safe drivers, specialised training for drivers in mining and industrial areas, and public messaging through All India Radio programmes, among other activities designed to promote road safety awareness at scale, said an official from the Commerce and Transport department.
