UER-II Was Built to Ease Central Delhi’s Traffic. Why Is It Becoming a Crash Risk Instead?

UER-II has witnessed several fatal crashes, raising concerns over speeding, wrong-side driving and road design. Experts have called for stronger enforcement and safer infrastructure.

By Sakshi

New Delhi, September 8: The 75-km Urban Extension Road-II (UER-II), which was constructed to divert heavy traffic from central Delhi, has seen a concerning number of fatal and serious crashes within a year of opening. Experts identify abrupt speed changes at merging points, the continued movement of prohibited vehicles and wrong-side driving as the main safety risks on the high-speed corridor.

A chain collision in Jharoda Kalan on January 31, in thick fog, claimed the life of a 55-year-old Punjabi resident. A 30-year-old rider lost his life ten days later when an SUV struck his two-wheeler near the Dichau flyover. A tempo carrying buffaloes crashed into the pillars of a flyover on July 2, killing three people near Alipur, while a tempo rammed into a woman walking near Bawana in May. A truck also overturned near Karala in July.

The Delhi Traffic Police recognised the increase in collisions but stated that a thorough analysis of the causes of the incidents and the identification of hotspots or black spots on the UER had not yet been completed, said a report by The Hindu.

According to Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Vijayanta Goel Arya, traditional enforcement is difficult on high-speed corridors. Hence, the department will shift towards camera-based enforcement.

“We realised that this is not an area where human intervention is always possible. You cannot put pickets at the beginning or end of a high-speed corridor, and stopping fast-moving vehicles is also difficult. So, we moved towards digital enforcement,” she told The Hindu.

The National Highways Authority of India’s (NHAI) camera network on the UER has been integrated with the traffic police’s enforcement platform. The integration is expected to become operational by the end of this week. Ms Arya said traffic violations captured by the cameras will be sent to the police portal for prosecution.

According to statistics provided by the traffic police, a similar integration on the Delhi-Dehradun Expressway, which was completed approximately a month ago, has already detected 10,106 speeding offences, making speeding the most common infraction reported there, the newspaper added.

Fatal crashes raise safety concerns on Delhi’s UER-II corridor. (AI-Generated image )

Driving the wrong way

Wrong-side driving is another significant issue on the UER. According to Ms Arya, about 3,000 FIRs were filed for the offence in Delhi this year.

To avoid paying tolls, some drivers remove or obscure their licence plates, making it more difficult for traffic authorities to identify and prosecute offenders.

To identify such vehicles, which are difficult to stop on a busy road, the traffic police have requested that the NHAI add automatic number plate recognition capabilities to its camera network, according to an official.

Big gaps in road safety

There are safety issues beyond traffic violations. The Raahgiri Foundation, a non-profit organisation focused on urban mobility, identified several design and road-use gaps in a road safety audit of a 15-km section of NH-344M from Bakoli village on NH-44 towards Gurugram.

It found that confusing entry and exit points encouraged wrong-side driving, while inadequate lighting, unsafe pedestrian movement and conflicts at service-road merges and junctions heightened the risks.

“A significant percentage of fatalities in recent years fell into the ‘unknown’ category in the data, indicating inadequacies in the documentation of crashes. Reducing these unknowns and allowing agencies to more accurately detect problem tendencies can be achieved by training police officers and utilising digital tools for crash-scene data collection,” said an official involved in the audits.

Determinant of crashes

Chetan Sodaye, programme lead (integrated transport) at World Resources Institute-India, said speed was a major determinant of crash severity, but enforcement alone could not make high-speed roads safe.

“On access-controlled, high-speed roads, even a small mistake such as wrong-side driving, a sudden lane change or vehicles merging from service roads can quickly lead to a fatal crash,” he said.

The problem is particularly acute where high-speed corridors pass through urban settlements. Roads designed for uninterrupted inter-city movement are increasingly being used alongside local traffic, pedestrians, cyclists, buses, autorickshaws, two-wheelers and three-wheelers.

Two-wheelers and three-wheelers continue to operate on the UER despite the prohibition, raising safety concerns.

According to experts, many riders choose the main roadway to avoid longer routes and U-turns on service roads, increasing the chances of collisions with fast-moving vehicles and creating speed differentials. Abrupt speed changes at merging locations are also a major concern, as rear-end crashes frequently occur when fast-moving cars stop abruptly or encounter slower traffic.

Experts said data-driven enforcement, safe interchange and junction design, speed management and access control must all function as a single system.