Rear-end collisions account for around 40 per cent of fatal accidents on highway stretches, with driver “sleepiness and fatigue” behind many of these crashes, according to an audit initiated by the government to bring down fatalities on national highways.
The study — a pilot audit of data on four highway stretches in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra totalling 557 km one way — also found several engineering defects such as gaps in medians, missing crash barriers, concrete structures kept along the road etc, all of which added to accidents and resultant fatalities. In the Agra-Etawah stretch, for instance, 7,500 such engineering faults were identified. The other three corridors that were audited are Etawah-Chakeri in UP, and Pune-Satara and Satara-Kagal in Maharashtra.
