Built to divert heavy traffic from central Delhi, the 75-km Urban Extension Road-II (UER-II) has witnessed a string of fatal and serious crashes within a year of opening, with experts pointing to abrupt speed transitions at merging points, continued movement of banned vehicles and wrong-side driving as key safety risks on the high-speed corridor.On January 31, a 55-year-old Punjab resident was killed in a chain collision near Jharoda Kalan amid dense fog. Ten days later, a 30-year-old motorcyclist died after an SUV hit his two-wheeler near the Dichau flyover. In May, a woman pedestrian was hit by a tempo near Bawana, while on July 2, three people were killed when a tempo carrying buffaloes crashed into the pillars of a flyover near Alipur. A truck also overturned near Karala in July.While Delhi Traffic Police acknowledged the rise in crashes, it said a detailed assessment of accident causes and the identification of black spots or hotspots on the UER were yet to be undertaken.Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Vijayanta Goel Arya said conventional enforcement was difficult on such stretches, prompting the department to 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 traffic police have integrated their enforcement platform with the National Highways Authority of India’s (NHAI) camera network on the UER, with the integration expected to become operational by the end of this week, Ms. Arya said, adding that traffic violations captured by the cameras will be transmitted to the police portal for prosecution.A similar integration on the Delhi-Dehradun Expressway, carried out about a month ago, has already detected 10,106 speeding violations, making speeding the dominant violation recorded there, according to data shared by the traffic police.Wrong-side drivingOn the UER, wrong-side driving is another major concern. Ms. Arya said nearly 3,000 FIRs were registered across Delhi this year for the offence.The problem is compounded by motorists removing or obscuring number plates to evade toll payments, making it harder for the traffic police to identify and prosecute offenders.According to an official, the traffic police have asked the NHAI to add automatic number plate recognition capabilities to its camera network to help identify such vehicles, which are difficult to intercept on a fast-moving corridor.Major gapsThe safety concerns extend beyond traffic violations. A road safety audit of a 15-km stretch of NH-344M from Bakoli village on NH-44 towards Gurugram by the Raahgiri Foundation, a non-profit organisation working on urban mobility, identified multiple design and road-use gaps. 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 portion of fatalities in recent years fell into an ‘unknown’ category in the data, reflecting gaps in how crashes are documented. Training police personnel and using digital tools for crash-scene data collection can help reduce these unknowns and allow agencies to identify problem trends more precisely,” said an official involved in the audit.Sarika Panda Bhatt, co-founder and trustee of the foundation, said the corridor would have to adapt to the settlements and development growing around it.“UER has already been developed, but its design must now evolve to respond to the communities and future growth around it. With dense habitation on both sides and significant upcoming development under Delhi Master Plan 2047, the corridor will face increasing pedestrian, cycling, public transport and local-access demands,” she said.She said the existing highway should be retrofitted with continuous footpaths, safe crossings, cycling infrastructure, better lighting, improved bus stops and safer junctions rather than waiting for conflicts to worsen.Determinant of crashChetan 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.Despite the ban, two-wheelers and three-wheelers continue to ply on the UER, increasing safety risks.Experts said many riders choose the main carriageway to avoid longer routes and U-turns on service roads, creating speed differentials and increasing the chances of conflict with fast-moving traffic. Moreover, abrupt speed transitions at merging points were a key risk, with rear-end collisions often occurring when fast-moving vehicles encounter slower traffic or brake suddenly.They said speed management, access control, safe interchange and junction design, and data-driven enforcement have to work together as one system.