Banned, so what? 2-wheelers linked to 30% of e-way accidents in Ghaziabad

GHAZIABAD: A van with six passengers flipped over on the Delhi-Meerut Expressway and caught fire after its driver braked hard to avoid a collision with a two-wheeler on May 25.

On April 30, three bikers, travelling from Palwal to Haridwar, pulled over briefly due to confusion over the route on the Eastern Peripheral Expressway (EPE) in the Dasna area and were hit by a truck.While the May 25 incident left two dead and four others injured, two bikers succumbed to their injuries in the April accident while the third sustained severe wounds.
Despite a ban on their entry, two-wheelers have continued to ply on the two busy expressways and, if the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and traffic department officials are to be believed, are involved in a bulk of the accidents reported on the two arterial roads.
Between January 1 and May 31, a total of 50 accidents took place on the two expressways that saw 28 fatalities and 64 injuries, as per the traffic department data. A total of 206 accidents were recorded on the stretch between UP Gate and Dasna on the DME and the EPE, in which 122 people lost their lives and 152 others were injured, it stated. A senior police officer said investigations had showed that two-wheelers were involved in approximately 30% of these accidents.
Arvind Kumar, NHAI project director, agreed that two-wheelers had become “a nuisance” on the two expressways. “NHAI has installed signboards at multiple spots stating that two-wheelers are not allowed on the DME and EPE. But poor enforcement helps these offenders have a free run,” he told TOI.
According to Kumar, difference in the speed of four- and two-wheelers created “a conflict and lead to accidents.Kumar claimed the NHAI regularly shared CCTV footage from the two expressways with the traffic department to initiate action against violators, SP (traffic) Ramanand Kushwaha said no such data had been received by his department so far.
“Traffic cops issue challans manually. We have identified 18 spots between UP Gate and Duhai where teams of three to four traffic cops are deputed daily to reroute two-wheelers trying to take the expressway,” Kushwaha said, adding that a total of 40,383 challans, including 1,083 to two-wheelers, have been issued to traffic offenders on the two expressways by the department from January 1 to June 20 this year.