Engineering faults often cause accidents

The statistics on road accident fatalities speak for themselves, but we can never fully gauge the human cost of each tragedy and its impact on families who have lost their loved ones.

There is also a considerable economic loss to a nation as a whole. According to the World Health Organisation, for the families, the losses are not limited to the cost of treatment, but also include the loss of productivity for family members, who need to take time off from work or school to care for the injured.

With engineering fault on roads often held up as one of the reasons for accidents, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) has identified over 5,000 black spots on National Highways.

So far, temporary measures on 1,739 black spots and permanent measures on 840 black spots on the NHs have been taken.

Under the Indian Road Safety Assessment Programme, the MoRTH has assessed 21,000 km of NHs and about 3,000-km stretch is under technological upgradation this year. The Ministry officials hope that the upgradation programmes will bring about a 50% reduction in road accidents.

As part of containing accidents and enforcing traffic rules, the Centre has brought in amendments to the Motor Vehicles Act, which proposed hefty fines. The United Nations says that the road safety policy should focus on areas like building safe infrastructure, changing road-user behaviour, improving post-accident care, rolling out safe cars and improving road safety management capacity.