NEW DELHI: The government on Monday launched the country's first cashless treatment of road accident victims on the Gurgaon-Jaipur stretch of NH-8. The project will ensure every injured in road accidents is rushed to the nearest hospital within 20 minutes after ambulances are informed and they will get free treatment for the first 48 hours.
All ambulances have been fitted with GPS systems for tracking. Moreover, a crash investigation vehicle has been deployed on this stretch to find the cause of accidents. A team of IIT-Delhi will investigate serious accidents for one year.
Launching the initiative, highways minister Oscar Fernandes said on the basis of the experience gained from this pilot project and the crash investigation by experts, a more comprehensive scheme may be launched for the entire country in phases. The programme was attended by Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and his Rajasthan counterpart Ashok Gehlot.
Highlighting the need for scientific crash investigation, transport secretary Vijay Chhiber said data from accident investigation would be used for enhancing mechanical safety of vehicles, improving road geometry and designing driving training courses.
"We have received about 1,000 emergency calls of accidents in the the past couple of weeks. The aim is to rescue everyone and provide medical help. We have taken up this project on no-profit no-loss basis. Such schemes can be a business proposition of insurance companies when we will have large number of stretches under these projects," said Alok Agarwal, executive director of ICICI Lombard, which is the "insurance partner" of the project.
Indian highways witnessed 4.9 lakh road accidents last year resulting in 1.38 lakh deaths.
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