Union Shipping, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said nearly 786 "Black Spots" (accident zones) have been identified on national highways across the country, which will be soon fixed to bring down road mishaps. Speaking after inaugurating the two-day national workshop on Road Safety in Visakhapatnam Friday, Mr. Gadkari said the Government will set right the identified black spots at a cost of 11,000 crore rupees under Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Sadak Yojana. Mr Gadkari said regional offices of the transport and district authorities will be empowered to identify and remove the black spots during the same period. Similarly, 96,000 km stretch of national highways would be converted into 2 lakh kilometers in the ensuing years of which 1,000 km would be converted into four-lane and 20,000 km into six-lane. He said at least 1.5 lakh deaths occur per year due to road accidents in the country and this can be reduced by 50 per cent in near future in co-operation with all State governments. Expressing concern on increasing road accidents in the country, he said 70-80 per cent of the mishaps occur due to road engineering defects and utilising the best of the technology available coupled with best engineering systems for road construction would drastically bring down the mishap rate. He also assured that the government will take all measures for transparent and corrupt-free system for issuance of driving licenses and certification as well as registration of vehicles. <br/><br/>Mr. Gadkari announced that as part of skill development, an institute for training of drivers, and research center will also be established in each State, while trauma care centers besides ambulances with necessary staff will be introduced at various points on national highways. He said the proposal is to have one ambulance for every 150 km in the country. <br/>Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu who attended the inaugural of the workshop said education, engineering, enforcement are very essential to control road accidents. He said it was important to educate children and drivers to follow traffic rules. Venkaiah Naidu said road accidents became the biggest killer in the country and serious efforts should be made to curb them.<br/>Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said his government will implement best practices followed by other States to lower road accidents. Stating that the state accounted for 8,275 deaths last year, he said all the black spots identified would be closed on top priority. <br/><br/>He attributed the reasons for increasing road accidents to over-speeding, overload of vehicles and drunken driving. The Chief Minister emphasised the need for checking drunken driving at all check-posts on national and state highways. <br/><br/>He said the government is also taking tough measures to control drunken driving by using interceptors and speed guns and added that data integration with toll plazas would be useful for tracking and assessing the movement of vehicles.<br/><br/>Transport Ministers from 18 states and transport officials from Central and state governments besides World Bank officials and foreign delegates are participating in the workshop to focus on the Brasilia Declaration, wherein the target is to halve the number of global deaths and injuries from road accidents by 2020. The workshop is being organised jointly by the Andhra Pradesh government and World Bank with the cooperation of the Government of India.<br/><br/>