Tech capital’s fatal flaw: B’luru streets remain deadly for pedestrians | Bengaluru News
Bengaluru:For a city that prides itself on being India’s tech capital, Bengaluru remains alarmingly dangerous for people who walk its streets. Police data reveal that nearly 28% of all road fatalities in the city involve pedestrians — a pattern that shows no signs of reversing despite enforcement drives and infrastructure interventions.According to traffic police, 218 of the 763 people killed in road accidents across the city this year (till Nov 30) were pedestrians. In 2024, 869 people lost their lives in road accidents and, of them, 246 were pedestrians. In 2023 and 2022, the number of pedestrians killed was 288 and 248, respectively. “At this pace, the city risks ending 2025 with roughly the same or even higher numbers than last year,” said a senior police officia.What’s striking is that these deaths often stem from preventable causes: rash driving, illegal parking on pavements and poor pedestrian infrastructure.Officials say pedestrians, especially senior citizens, are most vulnerable while crossing chaotic roads, navigating unmarked intersections, or walking on carriageways when footpaths are encroached upon, dug up or are broken.“Pedestrian safety continues to be one of our biggest concerns,” said a traffic police officer. “Many of these accidents occur because people are forced to step onto busy roads due to broken or dug-up pavements. We are trying to correct this through enforcement and design improvements,” the officer added.Police wrote to GBAHome minister G Parameshwara said city police have written to Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) to take up works related to improvement of pedestrian safety infrastructure such as installing skywalks at 101 locations, marking zebra crossing at junctions and illuminating streets on priority. GBA chief commissioner Maheshwar Rao, in a review meeting recently, instructed civic officials to identify 50 pedestrian-heavy locations that are in poor conditions in each zone across five corporations and expedite repair work.But the big question is: Why is the city witnessing so many accidents, culminating in pedestrian deaths, when traffic is always in a crawl mode, and the total road network remains stagnant at 13,000km?Motorists to blame too“Even the people are to be blamed,” said the senior police officer. In 2024, traffic police booked around 1.2 lakh cases against motorists who parked their vehicles on pavements and another 17,000 cases for riding on them. Till Oct this year, 83,000 such parking violations and 14,719 riding-on-pavement offences have already been recorded.While jaywalking is another major challenge the city faces, its pedestrian infrastructure also struggles to keep up. Many pedestrian deaths involved individuals crushed by vehicles that lost control on narrow roads or were hit by speeding vehicles while crossing stretches without zebra markings or signals, a traffic cop associated with accident investigations said.The issue of pedestrian safety also came up during the recent legislature session when Rajajinagar MLA Suresh Kumar put the govt on the mat. Parameshwara pointed out that steps were being taken to reduce risk for pedestrians. Grills are being installed along road medians to discourage jaywalking. Lane markings are being freshly painted across arterial routes. Pelican traffic signals have been installed at 39 locations, he added.
