‘Suggestions to BJP for its election manifesto, 2024 for ensuring Road Safety in India’
Other than the insurance companies and Supreme Court of India, several road safety experts and professionals working on the issue of road safety, who were very much part of the Motor Vehicle Act amendment process in 2019, also have the view that the MVA Act, 2019 needs to be further amended. It was expressed that during amendment, several provisions were dropped related to drunken driving, including the standards of child helmet (age 04-14 years) notified by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), making child restraint system mandatory rather providing an option of a seat-belt, penalty for the over speeding by the two-wheeler users and many more. Therefore, the upcoming central government shall surely take this issue seriously when they assume power.
Over speeding, the single most behavioural risk factors in India. Over speeding was responsible for 7o percent of road deaths in India in 2022, which saw a record breaking 1,68,491 fatalities and 4,40,000 injuries in the country. Over speeding accounted for seven out of every ten deaths on Indian roads in 2022. Over speeding increases the severity of the crashes and reduces the chances of protection from the safety devices too. Therefore, effective speed management must be the utmost priority of all the governments in the country. Therefore, in India the current speed management guidelines need to be revised and speed limits need to be reduced from 120 kmph to 100 kmph or 110 kmph.
Urban Road Safety has been an ever-burgeoning issue. During the two-year period of 2019 and 2021, the 2-year average fatality rate for all 53 cities with a population of 1 million or more was 10.5 per 100,000 population which is slightly lower than the national average of 11.3 per 100,000. There are some good examples from Puducherry, Chandigarh, and Mizoram, as well as showing the most significant reduction in the number of crashes. It is interesting that the crash rate decreased by 9.5% in West Bengal even though it already had one of the lowest rates among the large states in India. Therefore, it’s worth advising that all the states in the increasing trend of crashes shall review their urban speed limits immediately and reconsider these after a scientific review of the same.
Drafting a comprehensive and robust road safety action plan at national level and in all the states is a long pending issue in India. The Supreme Court Committee on Road Safety has been concerned about this since its formation on April 22, 2014. It has directed the Government of India and all the States & UTs on multiple occasions to make a Road Safety Action plan which will help in coordinating and better managing all the road safety initiatives, funds, and functionaries of road safety. But even today neither the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) or NHAI, nor the states and UTs have an exhaustive Road Safety Action which has clearly defined objective, targets, activities, output, outcome, well defined timelines, and budgetary provisions, fixing accountability of its implementation on an annual basis. Therefore, it would be an urgent need of the upcoming new government at national level to look into matters and ensure that all the road safety activities at national, States and UTs level are well coordinated in the form of structured and notified Road Safety Action Plans in the country.
For further details, please write to Madhu Sudan Sharma at mss1@cuts.org
