Getting to Zero

Abstract

I was recently reading a report by the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety of the United States on how improved vehicle designs and safety technologies in the last few years have helped bring down death rates. IIHS has found that in the US, the chances of dying in a crash in a late-model (latest) vehicle have fallen by more than a third in three years. I then tried in vain to look for similar data from the Indian market. Over the past couple of decades, vehicles have undergone a lot of changes in terms of their structural designs. Innovations have been made in the use of lighter, yet robust materials to improve safety, and various safety features have been introduced. Rapid advances in technologies – be it in terms of vehicle connectivity, interactive safety systems or autonomous vehicles – are changing the rules of the game, notes another study by McKinsey. Improvements in road infrastructure or policy interventions to bring down the incidences of fatalities on the roads have yielded no major improvement in markets like India and Brazil. In between 2003 and 2013, worldwide traffic accidents with casualties have reduced by 15 %, but on an annual basis, approximately 1.3 mn people still die on roads. Several countries today have set goals of zero deaths in motor vehicle crashes. The Vision Zero approach to road safety in Sweden, for instance, has been highly effective. Sweden was one of the earliest proponents of eliminating crash deaths, since its Parliament adopted the vision zero policy in 1997. Today, the country has one of the world’s lowest trafficrelated fatality rates. There are other examples as well from around the world, which India as a country can emulate and adopt. Of course, some tough decisions will have to be made and a strong will to implement safety regulations has to be nurtured.