Bus falls off bridge in Anantapur

At least 20 passengers were injured when a private bus in which they were travelling fell off a bridge after a collision with another vehicle in Andhra Pradesh’s Anantapur district on Sunday.

The accident occurred on the Hyderabad-Bengaluru national highway near Pogarur in Pamidi mandal early in the morning.

According to police, a private bus travelling from Hyderabad to Bengaluru collided with a vehicle on the bridge. Such was the impact of the collision that both the vehicles fell off the bridge.

Twenty passengers sustained grievous injuries. Police rushed to the spot and launched a rescue operation with the help of locals.

Police personnel pulled out the passengers trapped in the bus and shifted them to government hospitals at Pamidi and Anantapur.

A JCB was pressed into service to pull out some of the injured, including the bus driver. The condition of the bus driver is stated to be critical.

The accident led to a huge traffic jam on the national highway. Motorists faced severe hardship due to the traffic jam.

Additional police personnel rushed to the spot and cleared the traffic jam.

Andhra Pradesh is one of the states known for a high number of road accidents. On average, 22 people are losing their lives in road accidents in the state every day.

The state recorded 9,194 accidents from January to June this year, claiming 4,058 lives.

Last year, road accidents in the state claimed 23 lives every day. Though this number has slightly come down this year, the high number of road fatalities remains a cause of concern.

Police say non-compliance with traffic rules and safety norms and negligent driving are the main causes of accidents.

Statistics show two-wheeler riders account for the highest number of fatalities. In the 9,194 accidents reported so far this year, 3,980 two-wheelers were involved. As many as 1,835 (45.21 per cent) of those who died were two-wheeler riders.

The second-highest fatalities (669) were of pedestrians.