Lockdown helped bring down road accidents by 30% in Chennai, 21% in Tamil Nadu | Chennai News

The Covid-19 lockdowns helped bring down road accidents by 30% in Chennai and by 21% in Tamil Nadu as a whole last year. The latest NCRB report states that in 2020 a total of 872 motorists died in 855 accidents in Chennai. In the previous year, 1,262 deaths were reported.
Before the lockdowns, Chennai with a vehicular population of nearly 60 lakh reported five to six road accident deaths every day and frequently topped the country’s accident chart in the last decade. But in 2020, Delhi had the highest number of road fatalities (1,130).

While accidents have dropped, the number of motorists booked for rash driving has remained almost the same in Chennai city. Around 4,300 motorists, mostly two-wheeler riders, were booked last year by the traffic cops. And 98% of the motorists booked had caused harm to others on the road.
“Since roads were free, bikers and cars drove above the prescribed speed in a negligent manner. Many did not wear helmets or seat belts,” said a senior traffic cop. Corroborating this, data with the Chennai traffic police suggests that 8,000 bikers were booked for helmetless driving in the city every day last year.
Though drop in accidents could primarily be attributed to lockdown and stricter police vigil, road repair and rectification works carried out at accident-prone stretches too helped in reducing crashes after lockdown norms were relaxed in the last four months, said a state road safety cell member.
But Kamal Soi, a road safety expert said that only 23 out of the 560-odd accident blackspots in TN highways have been rectified till date. If they had completed rectification works as claimed, the accident rates shouldn’t have gone up as soon as vehicular movement became normal. Accident rates have once again started to climb. This proves that TN still has a long way to go in terms of road safety, he added. In the first five months of 2021, there has been a 15% increase in highway accidents.