In what can be seen as a major initiative towards driving road safety awareness in the country, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) plans to add road safety in the school curriculum across India in the next academic session.
16 May 2014 | 5050 Views | By Shobha Mathur
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India is a signatory to the United Nation’s Decade of Action plan for road safety across the world which aims to reduce road fatalities by 50 percent by the year 2020. The Indian government has since realised the gravity of this problem and has taken some meaningful initiatives in the recent past. Measures towards improving road safety include the much-awaited amendment in the Motor Vehicle Act (MVA), improvements in roads from the engineering perspective, road safety audits at all stages of road construction beginning from the planning stage, besides identification and remedy of black spots which account for almost 90 percent of road fatalities in India.
The government has also set a five-year target for reversing the accident growth rate to negative. The measures to check fatal road accidents include improving road engineering, adding public transport with inbuilt safety features, providing separate cycle lanes to the extent possible, construction of bylanes on highways after every 50km with proper signage, provisions for resting areas, eating joints, fuel stations and basic facilities, restrooms and communication facilities, thus improving the public transport system, according to Chibber.
IRF has also suggested road safety audits on state road networks by the state government. Globally, road safety audits are conducted to reduce road accidents. The audit includes recognising and improving faulty road design, which is a major cause of road accidents. IRF can help in training road safety auditors as it has already trained more than 250 road auditors till date in the country, said K K Kapila, chairman, IRF.
Photograph: Vijay Chibber, secretary, Ministry of Road Transport & Highways (MoRTH), inaugurating the IRF meet.