Road safety: Game-changing innovations required

The Global Decade for Road Safety is in its fifth year, but things remain as dismal and bloody they were. Experts believe that the focus needs a paradigm shift from 'what can be done' to 'who ought to do what' for things to change.

With some 15 agencies/departments/ministries being involved in the process for instance in a place like Karnataka, the time has come for a wholesome sectoral and planning integration.

The need of the hour is one of evidence-driven approaches, says G Gururaj of Nimhans, who has done seminal work on road safety issues in Bangalore. He points out that though the issue has been in the limelight since the early 2000s, the graphs of disabilities, deaths and hospitalisations has not come down. Dr Gururaj says that at a time when road accident casualties in India increased by 180 per cent, hight-income countries were able to bring their respective tolls down. This, he argues, was done through innovative measures.

"There is a lot of concern, but little action," he adds.

The action required, points out civic expert Ashwin Mahesh of MapUnity, should be a culture of continuous interventions. He says that just as technical problems need to be fixed by a tehnician, social problems need to be fixed by the people.

"We need to create an ecosystem of problem-solving," he asserts. Mahesh believes that road safety weeks that are observed once a year don't work; what does are measures that require continuous interventions.

Sunish Jauhari of Ashoka, which past week launched a competition for ideas that make roads safer for everyone, talks of the importance of crowdsourcing in this context. Jauhari says people's solutions have to emanate from people's ideas.

"We need to listen more," he argues, and believes that all this can't happen without a support system.

Ashwin Naik of Vaatsalya, who has closely observed this system in rural areas, thinks that most accidents are preventable. Naik, who has been associated with the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) on road safety related issues, says the problem is not about enforcing laws. And educating drivers/motorists should not be done in a campaign format.

The mess can be sorted out by better coordination among agencies like the transport, health and police departments, besides the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) which needs to ensure the infrastructure itself is able to handle accidents, especially trauma cases, says Dr Gururaj. He calls for a proper road management system to be put in place.

Yet, it is not right to blame the system alone. For instance, with their hi-tech gadgets and instrumentation in place, the city traffic police can facilitate the movement of ambulances through busy areas whenever needed. However, one of the reasons this has not worked out according to Mahesh is that hospitals have been lax in equipping their ambulances with GPS devices.

Experts are in agreement that the issue cannot be resolved without involvement of the largest stakeholder group: the people. RA Venkitachalam, vice-president (public safety mission) with Underwriters Laboratories, which is partnering Ashoka in the road safety initative, says, "Things cannot be done without the participation of all stakeholders."

Mahesh sums it up saying, "The integration (of all agencies/departments) can happen only through citizens' iniatives. There has to be both sectoral and planning integrations."