Pilot project underway on Gurugram’s Gold Course Road to limit vehicle speed

The city will soon have specified speed limits for different roads across the city, much like neighbouring Delhi, as part of an initiative by the Gurugram traffic police to make roads safer for road users and curb accidents.

In collaboration with two experts from IIT-Madras, the Gurugram traffic police on Tuesday launched a study from Golf Course Road to analyse the accident data, structure, traffic pattern and reasons behind accident. The analysis will help the police suggest an optimum speed limit for the road so that traffic can be regulated smoothly, and accidents can be curbed. officers in the know of the matter said.

Police said once the study is completed — it is expected to take at least a month — they will divide city roads into categories A, B and C, according to which they will limit the vehicle speed.

In May this year, to reduce the number of accidents, the traffic police and the district road safety committee set speed limits on major roads and started auditing all internal stretches in Gurugram to finalise speed limits. Accordingly, the speed limit for cars on highways was set at 90 kilometres per hour (kmph), and for two-wheelers and heavy vehicles is 50kmph. On major municipal roads, the limit is 50kmph for cars and two-wheelers, and 30kmph for heavy vehicles.

On state highways, it is 80kmph for cars, and 50kmph for two-wheelers and heavy vehicles.

Police said there are no speed limits set for arterial roads and local stretches and these will also be fixed after the study is over.

Virender Singh Sangwan, deputy commissioner of police (traffic), said count of accidents, black spots, architecture of road, class and type of vehicle movements, locality through which the roads cross and traffic pressure at different times of a day are the factors that would be studied by experts for suggesting speed limit for most of the important roads in the city.

“Golf Course Road being one of the busiest stretches in the city, we have decided to start the pilot project from there. At least 25 fatalities were reported from this stretch this year and five people lost their lives in these accidents,” he said.

Gurugram reported 812 accidents between January and October this year and 327 road fatalities. According to police, while 409 people were killed in road accidents in 2021, 375 lost their lives in 2020.

The Gurugram traffic police fines a person ₹2,000 for speeding and suspend the licence if (s)he does the same a third time. On an average, around 90 fines are issued for speeding a day, said the traffic police.

Sangwan said two experts from Centre of Excellence for Road Safety (CoERS), IIT-Madras is working on reducing road crashes through a systems approach and data driven insights and 5E Model (Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate).

“Gurugram administration has collaborated with CoERS IIT -Madras headed by professor Venkatesh Balasubramanian to minimise the crashes whose root cause is speeding. “Speeding is one of the major reasons for road crashes. The latest Ministry of Road Transport and Highways report“Road Accidents India 2020”, speeding caused 69.3% of road crash fatalities,” he said.

The Gurugram traffic police in April had launched the Integrated Road Accident Database (IRAD), which is aimed at highlighting road engineering defects, identifying black spots and reducing road accidents in the district.

As per iRAD 2022 data in Gurugram, speeding led to 322 road crashes of which 120 were fatal crashes, said police.

Professor Venkatesh Balasubramanian, head CoERS, IIT-Madras, said they have signed an MoU with the Haryana government to advice it to improve on its road safety performance. We are working with the administration of Gurugram for a data driven systems approach to road safety that can help them take decisions scientifically. Crash data shows that speeding is one of the root causes of road crash fatalities. Currently, we are focussing our efforts to help the police to improve their road safety efforts and implement scientific enforcement to save lives on road,” he said.

Police said once the classification is done, they will set up speed limits on all stretches and signages will be installed on all stretches.