India, South Korea join hands to manage highway traffic

The Centre will ink a pact with South Korea for traffic management on highways and to treat road accident victims, Nitin Gadkari, road transport minister, said on Monday.

The government will join hands with South Korea next month to introduce traffic management system on Indian roads besides planning to introduce an effective highways patrol, he said here after inaugurating the road safety week.

"I had been to South Korea and seen the functioning of their Express Highway Information Corporation. In May, South Korean President is coming here and the National Highway Authority of India and the South Korean Corporation will ink a pact for traffic control system," the Minister said.

Harvest organs

Worried over increasing road accidents, he said the Tata group's arm TCS expressed its interest to join hands with the government in an initiative to harvest organs from road crash victims as well as facilitate emergency services for the injured using helicopters.

"The government is building 750 road side amenities" and besides restaurants, restrooms, recreational facilities, these will also be equipped with helipads to lift critical patients to nearest hospitals, he said.

Consent field

Driving licences will carry consent for organ donation in addition to blood group, he said, adding that talks are also on with the Home ministry for highways patrol system.

Addressing the event, Highways Secretary Yudhvir Singh Malik said despite 1% of global vehicular population, India accounts for 10% of the global road fatalities.

He said the country lacks structured data from reliable sources and all efforts are on to identify root causes of accidents and rectify them.