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Call for launching a traffic safety drive on a war footing

NEW DELHI: The ceaseless occurrence of accidents on the Capital’s roads have compelled experts on road traffic to call for the launch of a traffic safety drive on the scale of the national malaria and polio eradication programme.

At the “Road Safety Conference” held at India Habitat Centre here over the weekend, several international experts expressed concern at increasing number of road deaths and urged Governments all over the world to adopt “Vision Zero”, a road safety programme that was launched in Sweden, and has been massively successful in reducing traffic fatalities in that country.

Chairman of the International Road Federation Jean Beauveard said: “Zeroing-in on all traffic fatalities must become an explicit goal for India and the rest of the world, otherwise we have no way of taming the appalling road-deaths toll.”

According to Mr. Beauveard, over 95,000 lives are lost every year in India in road accidents. The worldwide annual figure for fatalities on the road stands at about 1.2 crore. The two-day conference dealt with traffic issues such as “Road safety design”, “construction and design” and was attended by experts on road safety from all over the world.

“Global eradication of epidemics like small pox and now eradication polio has come only through a worldwide commitment to finally control the disease. Similar commitment is needed to end traffic deaths,” said Mr. Beauveard, adding: “Traffic deaths is also an epidemic which can be prevented.”

The chairman said Sweden had succeeded in bringing down its annual road-death toll to 440 which was the lowest since World War II. Annual traffic related deaths of children that were once numbered 118 had been reduced to 11.

“If Sweden can be successful, why can’t we?” asked Dinesh Mohan, Professor of the Transport Research and Injury Prevention Programme at IIT Delhi. “India is the only country in the world which does not have any clear policy on preventing fatal road accidents. The government should immediately announce a “road safety policy and set a target for reducing road accidents”

Prof. Mohan said over 45 per cent commuters in Delhi were cyclists and pedestrians and only 6-7 per cent used cars. However, the entire focus of current safety campaigns were car users and no separate arrangements for pedestrians and cyclists had been made.

“The foot-over bridges made for pedestrians in Delhi recently at six places are more of a problem and require a lot of energy for climbing and approaching the bridge. More over there are almost 50,000 places where pedestrians have to cross the road. The construction of six bridges will not solve any problem,” he concluded.

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