Chennai: Creating separate lanes for buses and two-wheelers, taking stringent action against traffic rule violators, designing better roads, and enforcing speed limits were among the key actions proposed by govt officers and researchers to curb road accidents in the state, at a conference held in the city on Friday.Organised by the Citizen Consumer and Civic Action Group (CAG), the ‘Tamil Nadu Road Safety Conference: From Mission to Action’ saw road safety experts calling for the implementation of a comprehensive and effective State Road Safety Action Plan, as the state leads the country in road accidents with 67,526 cases in 2024. The state recorded 18,449 road-crash fatalities in 2024.Calling for effective road engineering, TNRERA chairperson Phanindra Reddy said, “While we have well-connected roads, we also have a high volume of vehicles. The state ranks eighth in fatalities per 1,000 vehicles. Roads must be designed to enforce safe speeds, rather than relying only on signboards,” he said.Additional commissioner of police (traffic), GCTP, B Shamoondeswari, said that as technology grows, people must develop civic sense to improve road safety. “While we have technology such as ANPR to detect traffic violations, the number plates on vehicles are often fake,” she added.She also urged people to clear pending traffic challans. “From Oct 2025 to Sept 2026, more than 26,000 drunk-driving cases were registered. But only half of them have paid the fines,” she added.Vignesh Dhurai from IIT-Madras said a person violating traffic rules must first be made aware of it. “Instead of directly issuing challans, a person must first be warned that he/she is violating a traffic rule, and a record of it must be kept/ If the offense is repeated, fines should be imposed,” he said.S Saroja, executive director of CAG, said, “Collaboration between govt departments, enforcement agencies, technical institutions, researchers and civil society organisations is crucial to building a safer road transport system.”
