Curtailing road mishaps
Road mishaps continue to consume lives across India that too at a very fast pace. Indian roads witness 415 deaths per day in accidents and this figure is the highest in the world.
According to the Road Accident Report for 2019, a total number of 449,002 accidents took place in India during the calendar year 2019, leading to 151,113 deaths and 451,361 injuries.
Ironically, India accounts for 10 per cent of global road crash victims. This despite the fact that India owns just one per cent of the world’s vehicles.
Last year, India amended its Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Act, which is bringing a lot of innovation in terms of financing, protection and enforcement to the fore, but going by the increased number of road mishaps the amendments need to be put in place as soon as possible.
India as of now needs to make sure that there are adequate roadside barriers. The authorities need to make sure that traffic calming areas are being put in. The roads have to be safe. The vehicles have to be safe too if the road mishaps are to be curtailed.
Another key aspect is the vehicle approval and inspection. If the country does not have an appropriate vehicle inspection system then unsafe vehicles will end up plying on the road, and it’s clearly documented that unsafe vehicles are actually contributing to crashes.
Curtailing the number of deaths after crash is another aspect that needs immediate attention. India seriously needs emergency health care facilities in the vicinity of highways. This will make a huge difference in addressing the challenge of road safety.
When highways are planned, the officials need to make sure that crash victims are getting care within the first hour of the crash. That very often makes the difference between life and death.
Highway corridors in India that have a very coordinated healthcare and emergency health care of access, in terms of hospitals, trauma centres for emergency treatment, make a huge difference in terms of whether a crash victim recovers or ends up losing his life.
This system needs to be promoted and implemented at the state level where most of the deviations happen especially when highways are planned and later executed. In the countries having credible enforcement, the number of roads and traffic accidents is going down and this needs to be followed up here as well.
Unfortunately, the number of road fatalities like other regions is witnessing an upsurge in Jammu and Kashmir as well. Fatal road mishaps have become a routine in the entire region, be it Jammu, Kashmir, Chenab Valley or Ladakh. What seems more ironic is that these killings hardly unnerve us anymore.
Jammu and Kashmir has recorded the highest number of fatalities in a decade last year. According to data provided by government sources the number of people killed in road accidents in the region is twice the number of fatalities — which includes civilians, security forces and militant deaths — caused by unrest in the state.
In 2019 around 968 people were killed during 5,729 road accidents across Jammu and Kashmir till November. Another 7,250 were injured in these deadly mishaps as well. As per the records for the last eight years, on an average, 15 accidents take place every day. A person gets killed in an accident every seven hours while someone is left injured every hour.
KV Network
