Bengaluru's arterial roads: Fearsome pedestrian killers

Bengaluru’s arterial roads are the most fearsome pedestrian killers, accounting for two-thirds of all deaths, an independent analysis of fatal accidents has concluded. Arterial roads typically carry high volumes of traffic, and the study exposes serious gaps in safe pedestrian-crossing infrastructure.

The continuing study by The Footpath Initiative recently came out with its first findings from an analysis of 282 pedestrian deaths in 2017. An updated study will be out soon, but the trends are expected to be the same.

The study covered the city’s estimated 80 arterial roads with a total distance of 923 km. As many as 186 pedestrian deaths were on arterial roads (66%), while sub-arterial (12%) and local roads (21%) combined contributed to one-third of the fatalities.

The 60-km long Outer Rind Road covers only about 0.5% of the city’s total road network. But this stretch alone contributed to 12% of all the pedestrian fatalities.

Hosur Road, Mysuru Road, Ballari Road, Tumakuru Road and Old Madras Road were the other major arterial roads with high pedestrian deaths.

Predictably, a majority of the deaths occurred when the pedestrians were crossing the road. Out of the 186 deaths, 125 were attributed to this. The other victims were either walking along the roadside, just standing, busy in an activity on the roadside or waiting for a bus.

Seventy per cent of the victims were residing in areas adjoining the arterial roads. This meant that a majority of those killed were from nearby areas, “for whom access to arterial roads was extremely crucial on a daily basis,” the study noted.

Many victims were also observed to be from low-income backgrounds. The study analysed the occupation of 43 victims and found that 23 were employed as labourers, sweepers, drivers, house helps, security guards, couriers or gardeners.

Almost a third of the fatal pedestrian crashes on arterial roads were attributed to hit-and-run cases, where the motorist in the wrong sped away.

To access the accident data, the Footpath Initiative researchers obtained First Information Reports (FIRs) from the Bengaluru Traffic Police through Right To Information (RTI) applications.

Analysing walkers’ accident data for 2018, the same research group had identified Chennai as the city with the worst record.

Its pedestrian deaths per lakh population stood at 5.08, while Delhi was only marginally better at 4.74. Bengaluru was third with 3.27 deaths for every one lakh people.