By Kumar Vikram New Delhi, Sep 11 : With the increased emphasis on road safety the recent report of the Standing Committee of Parliament on Transport discussed the lack of road safety auditors in the country.
As per the report presented in Parliament last week, at the session of the sub-committee that was held on the 9th May 2022 the NHAI chairperson revealed that NHAI has discovered 4,002 black spots of which 2,569 spots have been eliminated, and works are in progress to fix 689 spots of black.”She declared that there is a shortage of road safety auditors in the country and that NHAI has initiated a the training program for road safety audits to create its own team of road safety auditors” stated the report.
In light of this the committee suggested to contract out road safety auditors.”The committee is hopeful that the road safety audit training program that is being implemented by NHAI is sufficient to meet the requirements of road safety auditors in the country.The committee suggests that NHAI could transfer any of its interim demands to road safety auditors since road audits for safety play a vital role in making sure that safety measures are in place on NHs across the country .the lack of human resources should not be an excuse to defer the audits.” stated the report.
The Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways (MoRTH) has made it mandatory to conduct every stages (Design construction, construction and operation) road safety audits for all National Highways and rectification of black spots and accidents accordingly.
The Ministry informed the committee that the correction of black spots on the road caused by accidents is based on the results of the outcome of road safety audits.
Road safety audits are carried out in accordance with IRC SP 88 2019 “Manual on Road Safety Audits”.
Speaking about the road safety audit KK Kapila, president of the emeritus International Road Federation (IRF) stated, “Among other initiatives being taken , one of the most significant is the Road Safety Audit.
Some of the changes that were made through the audits are geometric design improvements that allow for greater sight distance and geometry as well as the addition of measures to reduce speed pedestrian facilities, improvements to junctions as well as crash barriers, markings, signs and many more.All of these road safety features cost less than 5 percent.” said Kapila.
IRF, an international road safety organization that works to improve and secure roads all over the world and will conduct the Road Safety Audit on the most accident-prone segment of the Ahmedabad-Mumbai Highway to determine and correct any shortcomings on the section.
This comes in the following of the recent incident that took place in the most accident-prone area of the Ahmedabad-Mumbai Highway.
According to the Standing Committee report, National Highways comprise less than three percent of the road network, and 40 percent of villages are not connected to roads that are all-weather.Roads with potholes as well as speed breakers that are not properly constructed and the absence of service roads and a general absence of maintenance are the hallmarks of Indian roads.”Unsurprisingly, India accounts for 11 percent of global deaths in road accidents, despite it has only 1percent of the world’s automobiles.In the year 2020 the number of road accidents that were recorded in India was 3,66,138.Incorrect road design and engineering and the inadequate enforcement of traffic laws and the lack of quick trauma treatment contribute to the large number of deaths and road crashes in India,” said the report.
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