The vehicle numbers in J&K have doubled in seven years, up from 12 lakh in 2015 to 24 lakh in 2022, authorities said Wednesday. However, the authorities said that the fatalities were almost stagnant due to the strict implementation rules. Meanwhile, the authorities have introduced Integrated Road Accident Database (i-RAD) application which has revolutionised the road safety measures and improved the coordination between the different departments, medical reports, and identification of the black spots of road accidents to end the repeated road accidents and protect the lives of the commuters. NIC Tamil Nadu, Mohan developed the i-RAD app at IIT Kharagpur. The application has been adopted across the country as an open source, fully functional GPS based, objective, and assessable reporting format.
The use of i-RA’ has been made mandatory for onspot reporting, investigation, and analysing accidents with strict adherence to the practice tasked with monitoring and suggesting corrective measures.
Sharing details, an officer said, “The i-RAD app is operational in J&K from June 2022. Through this app, 2500 road accidents have been reported in the Transport Commission’s office.”The officer said that they had also reduced human intervention in issuance of driving licenses due to which they were getting verifiable data from the field and the accidents had decreased.
He said that through the i-RAD app 2000 plus road accidents have been reported so far in J&K.
He said that training has been provided to the concerned SHOs, Motor Vehicle Department (MVD), Traffic Police, road owning engineers, Health Department, and all the agencies, which have also been linked through i-RAD app.
“All the police stations and other officials have been given user identity,” the officer said. “As the officials are linked through this app, they fill up data online on i-RAD and Police immediately starts investigation, and, accordingly, the medical examination report as well as the road condition reports is uploaded on the app following the ground assessment.”
He said: “In our survey, the authorities have found that the majority of the road accidents have happened due to rash driving or technical snagging or due to rash driving of the drivers. In J&K, we have a target that by 2025 we will have stagnant road accidents and fatality rates to the level of 2015.”
