Road Safety

Pathways for Reducing Road Accidents

UN Road Safety Week Ends On Sunday May 23             The Road Safety Week ( May 17-23 ) ends  on Sunday and this is a good time to reflect on the enormous prospects that exist for reducing road-accident related distress worldwide. Nearly 1.35 million people ( 13.5 lakh) die in a typical year worldwide in road traffic accidents while around[Read More...]

Dinesh Mohan championed public transport, public protests

I was very sad to hear of the death this morning of Dinesh Mohan, noted expert on road safety, in St Stephen’s hospital in Delhi. It is a big loss to the international campaign for road safety, he was a consultant to many countries and currently the U.N. is observing a road safety week. He did pioneering research on road[Read More...]

Why reduce speed limit to 30 km/h? “Answer is blowin’ in the wind”

  Due to the Covid lockdown in 2020, though the number of road traffic accidents declined yet deaths did not decline in the same proportion because people drive at higher speeds which continued to result in fatal accidents. Every year, more than 1.3 million people die in road traffic crashes – that’s one person every 24 seconds. Excessive speed is[Read More...]

Was no one responsible for the death this prominent journalist?

A prominent , senior journalist in Delhi is seriously injured by a car allegedly driven by a senior defence organisation official, she dies later and the media does not even report this. What does this tell us of the state of our media ? She was injured on March 25 and succumbed to her injuries on April 22. . It[Read More...]

Himachal Move For Selling Liquor at Petrol Pumps Will Be Dangerous For Safety

According to a recent report in a  leading Hindi newspaper of Himachal Pradesh Amar Ujala (April 6), the Himachal government is seriously considering a proposal to start selling liquor at petrol pumps and gas stations. The government is reportedly in favor of taking forward the recommendations of a legislative committee to this effect. This has led to increasing concerns about[Read More...]

 Instead of reducing maximum speed limit, Thailand increases it to 120 kph

Thailand was among the countries globally that promised last year to reduce the maximum speed limit to 30 kilometre per hour (30 kph) to reduce road traffic crashes, and thus, save lives. More importantly, the government of Thailand played a major role last year as part of the International Advisory Committee to 3rd Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety held[Read More...]

 Market solutions will make roads unsafe for everyone

India along with 193 countries had promised to halve deaths and serious injuries on the roads by 2020 (as part of UN Sustainable Development Goals). But we have failed to keep this promise as the year 2020 passed by. In 2015, number of road traffic accident deaths in India were 146,133. In 2019, instead of declining (by half), the number[Read More...]