<div>The trilogy of cases — with a sampling of the experiences of Sabari, Shantum, Kuldeep Singh, Idris and, more recently, Gaurav Rana — has exposed the weak enforcement and regulation, poor engineering and traffic management, lack of interagency coordination, and deep societal apathy, all of which collectively characterise the complexity and seriousness of India’s road safety crisis. India needs to adopt a system approach to find a sustainable solution to this serious health crisis — for they cannot be resolved individually. This will require an overhaul of the institutional, financial, legal and regulatory framework for road safety management and working on all of these dimensions in a coordinated manner. <br /><br />Sriram Joshi, the road cop has rightly assessed, the institutional responsibility and accountability for road safety<br />management is unfortunately fragmented across several sectors of the government — from the basic licence to drive to road management, to transport services, enforcement and policing, health, education and automobile regulation, to name a few. Countries that have performed well in managing road safety challenges have established independent lead agencies that direct the national road safety effort and are transparently held accountable for delivering road safety. Successful lead agencies have been legally empowered to make strategic policy decisions, manage resources and coordinate efforts across all participating sectors of the government, the private sector and the NGO community.<br /><br />The global experience also highlights the importance of vision / goal setting, often driven by the highest level of the government and political structure, in steering the safety system. Globally, the most successful safety management programmes — for example, the Dutch Sustainable Safety and Swedish Vision Zero strategies — have often been driven by increasingly ambitious performance goals and targets, and accountability for their achievement. In doing so, these countries have reaped the benefit of aligning road safety vision with other sustainable development goals. For example, the well-planned provision of safer infrastructure facilities in urban areas to promote increased walking and cycling and measures to optimise vehicle speeds have also resulted in less greenhouse gas emissions, reduced energy consumption and improved physical wellbeing for the populace.<br /><br />In a complex multi-dimensional environment, a robust legal and regulatory framework is an imperative to specify standards and rules to achieve the safety outcomes and seek compliance with them. The international experience (for example, in the UK, Australia and Singapore) has demonstrated how the legal and regulatory framework can positively influence road user behaviour, improve the transparency and accountability framework and result in overall productivity gains for safety and traffic management functions. <br /><br />It is heartening to note that learning from such experiences, India is moving towards completely overhauling the archaic Motor Vehicles Act of 1988, fully aligning the road safety goals with efficiency objectives for public and freight transport, and drafting a modern safety and traffic management law. <br /><br />Effective road safety programmes require considerable investments to be sustained over decades. Various mechanisms for securing and allocating road safety investment funds can be identified but with some exceptions, road safety programmes in best practice countries are generally funded within public sector budgeting process. In a resource constrained environment, India should explore establishing a dedicated safety fund that could create incentives for continuous reforms in a federal government structure, help in enhancing system accountability and mobilisation of the much-needed public support.<br /><br />India’s road safety challenge is daunting. It will need concerted efforts by the government, civil society and the private sector; robust interagency coordination among different parts and tiers of the government, a comprehensive policy and business plan developed on data driven, evidence based, result focused intervention strategy. A steadfast vision, a unified approach, a strong independent lead agency backed by a robust legal and regulatory framework and dedicated financing mechanism can alone help India mitigate this crisis. <br /><br /><em>The writer is senior transport engineer, World Bank</em><br /><br />(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 06-10-2014)</div>
