The World Bank has approved a $250 million loan to support the Government of India’s road safety programme for seven States.
Programme for Road Safety
- Under this, a single accident reporting number will be set up to better manage post-crash events.
- It will be implemented in the States of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal.
- The $250 million variable spread loan from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) has a maturity of 18 years, with a grace period of 5.5 years.
- The project will also establish a national harmonised crash database system in order to analyse accidents and use that to construct better and safer roads.
- The project will also provide incentives to States to leverage private funding through public private partnership (PPP) concessions and pilot initiatives.
Road accidents in India: Key takeaways
- The report ‘Road Accidents in India 2020’ released by the Union ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH) provides for key stats.
- India has only 1% of the world’s vehicles but 11% of the global deaths from road accidents occur in India.
- About 450,000 accidents take place in India annually, of which 150,000 people die.
- There are 53 road accidents in the country every hour and one death every four minutes.
Why are there so many road fatalities in India alone?
- Weak enforcement of traffic laws: People hardly oblige to traffic rules and find easier to bribe policemen rather than paying hefty challans.
- Speeding issue: More accidents on the highways have been attributed to higher vehicle speeds and higher volume of traffic on these roads.
- Engineering bottlenecks: Issues such as gaps in the median on the national highways, untreated intersections, and missing crash barriers are some of the biggest engineering issues.
- Behavioural issue: Driver violations such as wrong-side driving, wrong lane usage by heavy vehicles, and mass violation of traffic lights, intoxication are the biggest behavioural issues.
- Lack of Golden hour treatment: Lack of rapid trauma care on highways leads to such high fatalities.
Imbibing road safety: Way forward
- Road safety education
- Better road design, maintenance and warning signage
- Crackdown on driving under influence of alcohol and drugs
- Strict enforcement of traffic rules
- Encouraging better road behaviour
- Ensuring road worthiness of a vehicle
- Better first aid and paramedic care
Do you know?
The ‘golden hour’ has been defined as ‘the time period lasting one hour following a traumatic injury during which there is the highest likelihood of preventing death by providing prompt medical care.
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