KOCHI: A country that records 1.50 lakh road accident deaths every year is taking baby steps to halve the number by 2020, to adhere to the Brasilia Declaration of 2015.
This works out to lives of 400 people being nipped in the bud — equivalent to the possible death toll in a Boeing aircraft crash, says Prerna Arora Singh, coordinator at the Centre for Road Safety at Sardar Patel University of Police, Security and Criminal Justice, Jodhpur. She was among those who attended the Brasilia Declaration — the Second Global High-Level Conference on Road Safety.
Amendments are also being made to the Central Motor Vehicles Act to give more teeth to stakeholders and to increase penalty on violators, she said.
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Ms. Singh, who is also the managing trustee of People’s Trust, a Jaipur-based NGO, travelled in public transport buses in Kerala recently to assess the condition of the State’s roads and to get to know how motorists and pedestrians behave. She discussed road safety measures with Thiruvananthapuram Range IG Manoj Abraham, who also heads the traffic wing of the Kerala Police.
“The Centre and several State governments are conducting road safety audits to rein in the spiralling number of accidents every year, causing death and permanent disabilities to lakhs of people who are in the prime of their lives. Thousands of lives can be saved each year if stakeholders, who have a key role in ensuring safety of road users, agencies in charge of road upkeep, and police and transport departments work in unison with policy makers. Teachers and students too must be roped in. The media too must follow up on accident probes and zero in on the cause,” she said.
Killing fields
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Unlike in most other countries, pedestrian rights are wholly ignored in India. Ms. Singh referred to how while she was in Canada, vehicles in all lanes on the highway stopped and waited till she crossed the road at an area which did not have pedestrian lines. “This was an eye-opener to me. It is high time India’s roads stopped being killing fields.”
Traffic force
She added that the Brasilia Declaration had prompted governments to take steps to enhance capacity building among stakeholders. “Sadly, educational programmes and courses in road safety, accident care, and traffic management are very few in the country. The police must form a specialised force trained in traffic management, rather than deploy men trained in law and order for traffic duty,” she said.