India needs to invest an estimated extra $109 billion in road safety over the next decade to halve its crash fatalities, the World Bank has said in a report. The bank said such an investment will bring economic benefits equivalent annually to 3.7 per cent of the GDP.

The report titled ‘Delivering Road Safety in India’ was released at the Third Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in Stockholm.

It points to the high death rate on India’s roads caused by chronic lack of investment in systemic, targeted, and sustained road safety programmes and identifies relevant investment priorities to reverse the trend.

Road crashes also impact economic growth, costing the economy between 3 to 5 per cent of GDP a year, it said.

Road crash fatalities in India

India has the world’s highest reported number of annual road crash fatalities. According to the World Health Organisation, road crash fatalities in India account for approximately 11 per cent of the estimated 1.35 million global toll each year.

Every year, about 150,000 people lose their lives on India’s roads and more than five times that number are injured or maimed for life, the report said.

Vulnerable road users, primarily pedestrians, cyclists and two-wheelers, account for almost 54 per cent of all fatalities and serious injuries. The young, working-age population is predominantly affected. Road users between the ages of 18 and 45 comprise 69 per cent of all fatalities.

The national highways alone claim one life a year for every 2 km. This is 10 times higher than the developed country threshold.

Speeding is a serious issue in India. In 2018, 67 per cent of crashes, 64 per cent of fatalities and 67 per cent of serious injuries were attributed to overspeeding.

Given the rising trajectory of crashes in India, the report calls the country’s recent enactment of the Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act, 2019, as an important step towards reducing road crash fatalities.

Need a regional initiative

Part of a regional report, ‘Road Safety in South Asia: Opportunities for Shared Regional Initiatives’, the World Bank in its report calls for regional initiatives to make roads and vehicles safer, even while making national-level actions a top priority.

According to the report, currently, South Asian countries are in varying stages of developing crash data and performance management systems that analyse the underlying factors behind each crash - whether it was defective road infrastructure, faulty vehicle design or human error.

Tamil Nadu has already rolled out a Geographical Information System-based programme to map road accidents state-wide, identify the most crash-prone hot spots, and pinpoint corrective action, the report said.

The system is also linked to medical facilities across the state, reducing the response time of emergency medical services from 30 to 11 minutes, at par with the world’s best performing trauma services, it said.

Indian Road Congress

The Indian Road Congress (IRC) is the premier body responsible for evolving standards, specifications, codes and manuals that cover the planning, design, construction, operation and management of all categories of roads, including their safety.

The IRC was set up in December 1934 on the recommendations of the Indian Road Development Committee, best known as Jayakar Committee.

The IRC comprises highway engineering professionals and practicing engineers from central and state governments, academia, research organisations, and private industry (contractors, consultants, and suppliers and manufacturers of instruments, construction equipment and materials).

A specific IRC committee deals with road safety and design. Current IRC road safety standards are in urgent need of review and updating in light of the strategic reorientation of road safety in India and the government’s ambitious long-term vision. This includes design speeds, geometric elements, intersection layout and drawings, related codes and manuals.

Issues requiring special attention include speed control and promotion of safe behaviour through infrastructure design, safer cross sections to protect vulnerable road users at the urban interfaces of national and state highways, and safe provision for tractors, bicycles, and other non-motorised transport.

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