A road safety quartet and the road ahead

News: In spite of several years of policymaking to improve road safety, India remains among the worst-performing countries in this area.

The persistently high annual death toll brings into question the country’s ability to meet Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3.6, which aims to halve the fatalities and injuries from road traffic accidents by 2030.

Meanwhile, the United Nations is holding a high-level meeting on Global Road Safety on June 30 and July 1, 2022 to review the progress and challenges.

What is the situation wrt road safety in India?

1,47,913 lives were lost to road traffic accidents in 2017 as per Ministry of Road Transport and Highways statistics.

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) figure for the same year is 1,50,093 road accident deaths.

Further, India’s data on road crash mortality are seen as an undercount, and the Global Burden of Disease report for 2017 estimates, based on verbal autopsy sources, that there were 2,18,876 deaths.

What are the new findings on road safety?

A new analytical series on road safety worldwide, published by The Lancet, proposes that India and other countries could cut accident-related deaths by 25 to 40%.

Globally, Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC) bear the maximum burden of road fatalities and injuries, with high economic costs — an average of 3-5% of GDP — suffered by these countries in 2014.

What are the issues with road safety in India?

India amended its law on motor vehicles in 2019, but its implementation by State governments is not uniform or complete.

The focus of State governments, remains conventional, with an emphasis on user behaviour (drivers and other road users), education and uneven enforcement.

– Low emphasis is placed on structural change such as raising engineering standards for roads, signages, signals, training for scientific accident investigation, raising policing skills etc.

In India, speedy highway construction without reconciling fast and slow-moving traffic, presence of ramshackle vehicles, rampant wrong-side driving, and poor trauma care in non-urban centres contribute to high death and disability rates.

Major interventions in India, first suggested by the Sundar Committee (2007) and ordered by the Supreme Court in S. Rajasekaran vs Union of India have not made a dent in the problem of pedestrian deaths. The measures include setting up of an apex national body for road safety, and fixing decentralised responsibility at the district level.

The Sundar Committee pointed out that India lacked a technically competent investigation arm that could determine the cause of accidents;

the National Road Safety Board Rules, 2021, provide for the formation of technical working groups covering, among other things, crash investigation and forensics.

In the absence of scientific investigation, perceptions usually guide the fixing of liability.

The MV Act stipulates only a fine up to one lakh for failure to follow norms and stipulations by the designated authority, contractor, consultant or concessionaire, leading to death or disability. Also, there is little evidence that even this has been enforced after a public inquiry.

How can road safety be improved?

Using the Global Burden of Disease data, a statistical model was constructed to estimate the number of lives that could be saved with interventions in the respective areas for each country.

An average of 20,554 lives could have been saved in India with a reduction in speeds, 5,683 with helmet interventions and 3,204 with seatbelts.

In addition, 17% of road traffic injury-related deaths in LMICs could be avoided if trauma care facilities improved.

What can be done to cut death and injury rates?

In the short term, slowing down traffic, particularly near habitations, segregating slower vehicles, enforcing seat belt and helmet use and cracking down on drunken drivers could produce measurable gains.

Source: This post is based on the article “A road safety quartet and the road ahead” published in The Hindu on 1st Jul 22.

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