<div>In my last two commentaries, I discussed some of the major problems with road safety in India, but primarily from a post-accident perspective. That more than 70,000 lives can be saved on our roads each year through rapid medical care is a fact, but so is that the burden of death and disability caused by road crashes will continue to rise unless immediate measures are taken to prevent their occurrence.<br /><br />The crash in which Gaurav Rana intervened was caused due to faulty road engineering and not necessarily driver error; but the brunt was borne by the cyclist who paid with his life, and the truck driver, who will be paying medically, financially and legally for some time to come. Faulty road design and engineering is barely looked at as a contributing factor in road crashes, and even if it is, accountability is rarely fixed. Road-user conflict, touched upon by Joshi, was also a contributing factor in this accident. A vulnerable road-user, the cyclist, was fighting for the same space as the truck. Globally, the trend has been to segregate non-motorised traffic (NMT), such as pedestrians and cyclists, from motorised traffic. But India is yet to get its act together. <br /><br />Engineering and design is but one of the contributing factors to the high number of road-crash deaths in India. Another significant factor is how road-users get trained and authorised to drive. The filtration process involved in getting this authorisation, including the driver’s training system and the licensing regime, remains highly compromised. Training is not mandatory before one applies for a license and the licensing process in itself lacks the essential tenets of thorough testing, transparency and uniqueness. Adding to the problem is weak enforcement of traffic laws — enforcement remains largely human dependent and, therefore, prone to capacity constraints and corruption, and the schedule of penalties has proven to be anything but a deterrent.<br /><br />The cure for India’s road-crash epidemic lies in the establishment of a comprehensive framework for road safety. This framework must have two essential elements: a comprehensive road safety and traffic regulation law, and the establishment of a dedicated lead authority to ensure its enforcement and build accountability in the system. <br /><br />The comprehensive law must overhaul the driver’s licensing system by removing corruption from RTOs and ensuring stringent testing standards; make driver’s training mandatory but also build capacity and quality in the system to entertain the large pool of trainees that would get created; protect the most vulnerable road users including pedestrians, cyclists and children by clearly defining their rights as road-users; bring faulty road design and engineering under the ambit of law, mandate road audits and ensure strict penalties for engineers and contractors who ignore safety in design and construction; standardize crash investigation to remove subjectivity that presently exists and enable proper data collection and analysis; mandate use of technology for enforcement and ensure that States implement the mandate; and finally provide for strong penalties for rash and negligent behaviour on road. <br /><br />Jahnvi had noted that the various contributing factors as explained come under the purview of different agencies. For each of these agencies, road safety is not their mission or vision. For example, for the aim of PWD is ensuring there are roads for vehicles to drive on. But it is not ‘safe roads’; the licensing authorities want to deliver licensed drivers but are not aiming at delivering road respecting drivers. These different stakeholders rarely work together, and none of them are singularly focused on road safety. Also, the resources to enable safer roads are therefore not only limited but scattered. The establishment of a lead authority for road safety will ensure that a single body with legislative backing, adequate funding and a full-time secretariat can bring all the different stakeholders to work together, mandate standards for road safety, and establish a clear vision to reduce the burden of death and disability due to road crashes in India.<br /> <br />The Supreme Court of India has called the issue of road crashes in India a “disaster”. The response to this disaster must ensure a robust and accountable framework to enable and sustain road safety in India. <br /><em><br />The writer is the Founder and President of SaveLIFE Foundation, a non-profit organisation committed to improving road safety and emergency medical care across India<br /></em><br />(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 06-10-2014)</div>
