A Systematic Approach for Formulation of a Road Safety Improvement Program in India

Abstract

This study presents some basic concepts for a systematic approach for formulation of a road safety improvement program in India. The numbers of road accidents are increasing at an alarming rate in India. Thus, there is an urgent need for a systematic approach to improve road safety. Road safety improvement program is a systematic approach to reduce the injuries, fatalities, deaths and loss of public properties because of road accidents. In order to develop an effective road safety improvement program, it is required to collect relevant data and analyze accident record so that hazardous locations can be identified. Further, it is required to conduct studies on identified safety hazardous locations to identify remedial measures to reduce severity and number of accidents. Further, as it is not possible to implement all remedial measures identified due to limited resources available, it is also required to determine urgency of the safety measures identified. Literature review indicated that the comprehensive accident record, essential for formulating road safety improvement program is not available. Hence, hardly any meaning full analysis is done to find out the accident hazardous location, vulnerable road users involved in accidents, causes of accident etc. which are so essential for identifying preventing measures. This study highlights the deficiencies in the present state of the art and also presents some basic concepts so that systematic approach for formulation of a road safety improvement program in India can be developed. The study presents basic concepts to develop a accident record system, for ranking of Safety hazardous locations, for identification of safety improvement measures and to determine priorities of safety measures. It is expected that this study will provide a systematic approach for development of road safety improvement program in India and thus pave the way for improving safety on Indian roads.