Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 150
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 151
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
LATEST NEWS UPDATES | On the road

On the road

Share this article Share this article
published Published on Nov 19, 2009   modified Modified on Nov 19, 2009

No matter how much we try to make up for our historic underinvestment in roads by frantically constructing flyovers and highways, India will never be truly on the move unless it addresses the dark question of injury and mortality. Road safety is a public health crisis, as the WHO has been pointing out for years. There are 13 deaths every hour on our roads, and India now has the highest number of road deaths in the world. What gives? While the glib explanation would point at exploding traffic levels wearing out our capacities, that is only the latest challenge — the Indian road system has weak fundamentals.

Whether it is engineering, education or enforcement, India has been unforgivably lax in the last decades. A recent study by Harvard economist Sendhil Mullainathan and others examined how corruption produces unsafe drivers — examining Delhi’s department of motor vehicles, it showed how people twisted the driving licence procedure through agents and touts instead of taking the mandated test, making roads collectively unsafe for the rest of us. What’s more, driving in India is a Darwinian test of strength. We honk our way through traffic snarls (or pretend we can, anyway), we list and weave through lanes, we intimidate smaller vehicles and pedestrians. Pavements are for sissies, jaywalking is a mark of urbanity. A clear stretch of road is open invitation to speed. We cannot seem to internalise basic information about entry and exit, right of way, yielding to special vehicles (like school buses and ambulances), wearing helmets while on a bike. Obviously, it is not intrinsically Indian to flout the rules of road safety — it is just that most of us were never schooled in the finer points of driving etiquette, or even helped along by an intuitive traffic code.

The blame also lies with inadequate engineering — the lack of large, legible street signs and dividers — as well as a weak and arbitrary enforcement system. The road safety problem is often partitioned into the need for an agency whose singular problem it is to address road safety — to oversee every detail from automobile standards to traffic-related injuries — along the lines of the American National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or the Swedish National Road Administration. Without such a systems approach, these cheerless road safety stats from India are unlikely to improve.


The Indian Express, 19 November, 2009, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/on-the-road/543355/
 

Write Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

Video Archives

Archives

share on Facebook
Twitter
RSS
Feedback
Read Later

Contact Form

Please enter security code
      Close