To make travel safer for motorists on Pune-Mumbai Expressway, the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) is to install Brifen wire ropes at a few accident-prone spots of the 95-km-long expressway. A pilot project for the same expressway was carried out in March this year, along a 2.5 km stretch at Kamshet. It was a success. Now MSRDC plans to use the wire rope along the entire 95-km-long expressway.    

MSRDC took the initiative following the death of Marathi actors Anand Abhyankar and Akshay Pendse in an accident in December 2012 and similar such mishaps have prompted it to think of installing these Brifen rope wires on the expressway on a pilot basis. The actors' car was hit by a vehicle that had lost control and entered the opposite lane.    

Sources concerned said that the wire ropes will help hold back a vehicle which would have otherwise gone out of control, jumping the median and crashing into oncoming traffic from the opposite direction.    

However, now MSRDC has decided to use the ropes only at accident-prone locations, which cover a distance of 12 km. At present, 15 of such locations have been identified for installation, at an estimated cost of Rs 4.94 crore. The length of the rope at each location will vary from 500 metre to a kilometre.