Noida: The traffic police of the district have collected over Rs 2 crore in penalties levied from traffic offenders in the month of January.
As per the information received from the Noida traffic cell, some 55,424 vehicles were challaned during the month for various traffic violations in the district. Through the challans, the traffic police recovered Rs 2, 25,72800.
Talking to CitySpidey, an official of the traffic cell said, "There has been an increase of 43.38 per cent in the challans this year in January compared to the corresponding period last year. Similarly, the recovered amount has increased by 645.70 per cent.”
In January last year, 38,654 traffic violators were challaned and Rs 30,27,050 was recovered from them, as per the officials.
In spite of these efforts to curb accidents in the district, the official records reveal a different story. As per the records, on an average, there are at least two incidents and one death every day in Noida due to road accidents. The total number of accidents in Noida was 933 in 2015 and 926 in 2016. This grew to 1,043 in 2017 and 1,067 in 2018.
The total number of fatalities in these accidents also grew from 362 in 2015 to 382 in 2016, 423 in 2017 and 452 in 2018. A similar increase can be seen in the number of persons injured as well.
A maximum number of accidents take place along expressways. Noida has a large share of expressways and state highways passing through the city. Approximately 5 per cent of roads in Noida are highways, higher than the share of other cities.
While the number of casualties is increasing at the rate of 6.8 per cent in Noida, the number of vehicles passing through is increasing at a rate of 20-25 per cent every year.