Rethinking Road Safety — Forgiving Roads
What does it take for safe travel to your destination? How has Road Safety evolved in India? Mr. Mike Drenzes answers these questions in his webinar “Forgiving Roads” on the occasion of 32nd National Road Safety Month.
Road safety transcends beyond the transport sector, directly impacting public health, societies, and economies. By maximizing the healthy years of life, liberated of injuries and disabilities, actions to reduce road traffic injuries can help countries like India increase productivity, enhance their population's well-being, and build human capital.
About the Speaker: Mr. Michael G. Dreznes is the former Executive Vice-President of the International Road Federation (IRF). He has been recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on roadside safety promoting the concept of ‘Forgiving Roads,’ and has conducted multiple road safety training seminars on roadside safety, work zone safety, vulnerable user safety, and road safety audit in more than 70 countries around the world.
The world recorded 2,271,180 fatalities due to COVID-19 as of February 05, 2021! The fact is pretty much known to all because of the coordinated global response against the Pandemic. The doors have been shut all over. However, the world witnessed 3,700 deaths on Roads on February 05, 2020, but there was no front-page news covering the figures. Was this because the figures are low? Well, certainly not! To draw attention towards the stats:
- 1,350,000 people die on roads each year globally, along with 20–50 million injuries, equivalent to 20 fully loaded 737 MAX airplanes crashing! Was that devastating? There’s more to it.
- 150 people die in one hour during the course of this webinar
- Out of these 150, roughly 35 would have been Indians.
Something alarming to imagine is that these 35 people could be our mothers, sisters, fathers, brothers, children, or friends! A very interesting fact by the Ministry of Transport & Highways, India: “India loses a city every year in its road crashes.” There’s an economic cost to it: 8% of GDP every year & for each life: 70 times Gross National Domestic Product per capita.
Unlike COVID-19, this pandemic has vaccines (well, not now)! 92% of the fatalities are seen in lower/middle-income countries, which results from the non-implementation of these vaccines. With so much damage every minute, Road Crashes are the second deadliest pandemic after the Plague of Justinian, with 60 million cumulative deaths since eternity.
Something very close to the kind of response we need was: ‘UN Decade of Action for Road Safety (2011–2020)’ launched on May 11, 2011, with a target to reduce these deaths by 50% by 2020. The UN Road Safety Collaboration has identified 5 pillars to work around, and our esteemed speaker, Mr. Mike Drenzes, has been serving as the Co-Chairman for Safer Road Mobility.
Not a complete failure, the decade indeed rose the awareness levels, and that makes 2021 a special year that witnesses ‘Indian Road Safety Month’ instead of a week.
Next what?
The world awaits a ‘Second Decade of Action (2021–2030)’, approved in August 2020 with an aim to reduce roughly 7–8% of deaths each year for 10 years. Amongst all the recommendations, ‘Managing Speeds’ has been the key one! And why shouldn’t it be when exceeding lawful speeds contributes to the number one cause of deaths (2016).
The recent meeting on February 02, 2021, has been successful in developing ‘The Global Plan of Action,’ where key areas of concern will replace the old pillars. Additionally, this time, the focus will also be on those 20–50 million global injuries that have not been talked of.
The ‘Forgiving Roads’ of the title are one of those ‘Vaccines’ that can let go of humanly mistakes by following ‘A Safe System Approach’ built on the following principles:
- People make mistakes.
- The human body has a limited physical ability to tolerate crash forces before the harm occurs.
- A shared responsibility exists among those who design, build, manage & use roads and vehicles & provide post-crash care to prevent crashes resulting in serious injury or death.
- All parts of the system must be strengthened to multiply their effects & arranged such that if one part fails, the road user is still protected.
With our roads already filled with crashes, there are three sorts of impacts observed:
- Vehicle impacting an obstruction,
- Human Collision,
- Internal organs impacting the chest cavity. Safety edges on roads, rumble strips at the road end, high friction technologies, proper vertical signages, horizontal declination, smarter vehicles, providing cleaner zones for drivers to transport back to road or barriers/crashworthy terminals (rigid, semi-rigid, or flexible) can be some ways to cope up with it.
As rightly said by Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” It is high time we stop those needless deaths! If necessity is the mother of invention, then creativity is the father, but being creative requires courage. Road safety is all about eliminating the hazard, moving it away, modifying it, or shielding it (American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials’ Four Recommended Steps).
Let us find ways!
Let us stop making excuses & start making changes!
Let us be the reason someone gets home safely tonight!
Let us take a moment to thank Road Authorities, Traffic Police, Transportation Engineers, Academia, and the most important of all: ‘First Responders’!
The world’s safest roads belong to SUN countries (Sweden, UK, Netherlands). As engineers of this country, it is time we build new ‘Vaccines,’ new engineering concepts to fight against this ‘Forgotten Pandemic.’ The world is a dangerous place not because people do things evil but everyone looks at & does nothing about it. As the largest student group of IIT Roorkee, NSS IIT Roorkee believes these steps should be instrumental in awakening the youth & increase sensitivity towards the graveness of the topic.
This article was written by Kavya Saxena under the R-Safety Initiative on the occasion of 32nd National Road Safety Month, NSS IIT Roorkee.
