Rush hour traffic fuelling mishaps

Hyderabad: The rush hour traffic in the mornings and evenings appear to be the root cause for most of the road accidents in Hyderabad.

Traffic congestion due to aggressive driving by office going crowd, bad road conditions, jostling for road space by school and college transport vehicles, RTC buses and trucks, autos and twowheelers in Hyderabad are fuelling road accidents during the rush hour.

While many of these road accidents may not be fatal, based on the hour-wise accidents data published by the Hyderabad Traffic Police, 9 am to 11 am records the highest number of road mishaps in the city.

The data for January and February-2024 shows that a total of 72 accidents occurred during that time frame, with a total of 90 accidents from 6 pm to 9 pm.

The heavy traffic data may indicate that since the traffic density during peak hours is high, the number of accidents is also higher. That said, city-based road safety expert Naresh Raghavan points out that all these accidents might not necessarily be fatal.

“It is a universal understanding that the most fatal accidents happen around midnight. And there are multiple reasons for that. When the data shows that most accidents in the city happen during peak hours, which is morning and evening, we must understand that these accidents may not be fatal. In bumperto-bumper traffic it is very common for minor accidents to occur,” he states.

While there is no data available to show how many peak hour accidents were fatal, overall, there were 23 serious crashes in January and 20 in the following month. When compared to 2023 and 2022, the number of fatal accidents has reduced in 2024.

However, the number of accident cases reported increased significantly. Of the fatal accidents that occurred in these months, two-wheelers were involved in most of them, either as a collision with other vehicles or as a self-cause. It is also the same for overall road accidents in Hyderabad, including the nonfatal ones.

For this, Raghavan adds, “I’ve noticed two-wheeler riders are often very impatient and they keep changing lanes very quickly. This gets them into accidents.”

Gender-wise, more males are involved in accidents, probably because more men drive when compared to women, age-wise it is those between 21 and 40 years