NEW DELHI: New Delhi: While most countries design their road transport systems to succeed, India needs to design them to mitigate failures, “given our processes and the way we approach things,” a senior official said on Sunday. senior government official.
Addressing a conference on road safety at the Bharat Mobility Expo, Union Secretary for Highways and Road Transport V Umashankar highlighted the legacy problems and the difficulty of changing the behavior of all road users. “Look, most countries design their road transportation systems to be successful. But we have to design them to (mitigate) failures, given our processes and the way we approach things. We take many things lightly and some seriously. Let’s take the example of wearing a helmet. Do they need to tell you that a helmet protects you on the road? said.
The secretary highlighted that about 44% of fatalities in road accidents are occupants of two-wheeled vehicles, followed by pedestrians (20%). In 2023, the number of people killed in road accidents reached an all-time high of 1.73 lakh. He said every fatal road accident needs to be investigated locally and action taken rather than following an “anecdotal path” and that this must address road, vehicle and behavior (RVB) issues.
Supreme Court Road Safety Committee member Sanjay Bandopadhyay also said interventions should be made only after finding the exact causes of accidents by conducting proper investigations.
Umashankar said the number of accidents and deaths has increased despite there now being better and wider roads, safer and better quality vehicles with 5-star safety rating due to a combination of factors.
He cited the recent fatal accident in Jaipur involving an LPG tanker and another truck on NH-48 as an example of how multiple factors led to the tragic incident as a case study. The secretary said there was a cut in the NH median as the construction of an elevated bypass was delayed due to land acquisition issues.
Umashankar said the Jaipur Development Authority could not acquire land for the elevated bypass and the NHAI also did not take steps on its own to acquire the land. CCTV footage indicates that the driver may have fallen asleep and saw the LPG tanker making a U-turn just seconds before applying the brakes.
The secretary said that these show the working conditions of drivers who spend more time behind the wheel. He also noted that the truck had a front guard (gadget), just to allow the cleaner to stand on it and wash the windshield. “It was a ‘jugaad’ that someone had made to make his life more comfortable. “That device hit the valve and it broke, causing a gas leak,” he added. When someone tried to start an engine, a spark was produced, causing a large fire.
According to him, the illegal front guard must have been approved by some authority, since these vehicles undergo fitness tests annually.