Blog Posts: Road Safety

Streets in the last century were primarily designed as a mode of transport for goods and services. This automobile-centric approach of street design stifled the human accessibility aspect, and eventually, cities forgot that every citizen is a pedestrian at some point in a day. But this scenario is changing, and cities globally are leading the movement to reinvest in their streets with a focus on pedestrian environment.

Mumbai is a city of pedestrians, with 51% of the total daily trips being walk trips, according to the...

This blog post originally appeared in WRI Insights.

India’s parliament approved the Motor Vehicles Amendment Bill on July 31, 2019, the result of a five-year effort to improve national legislation on road safety. After the president’s approval, India’s streets may finally become safer places for both pedestrians and drivers.

Road traffic deaths have reached alarming levels across the world, with...

India suffers from the highest burden of road crashes, contributing to nearly 10% of global road deaths. In just the last decade (2008-2017), road crashes in India have increased by 23%, with an average annual increase of about 2% every year. The problem is particularly acute in urban areas, which witness nearly 42% of all crashes in the...

Intersections are locations where roads merge or cross each other, thus putting multiple modes of traffic from different directions into potential conflict. Although they cover only a fraction of the 2000 kilometre long road network in Mumbai, they account for nearly 40 percent of all high risk zones, or blackspots, in the city. They are also where almost a third of all road traffic fatalities occur. What is even more alarming is that more than half of these fatalities are pedestrians.

Earlier this year, the Mumbai Traffic Police and Vital Strategies, under the Bloomberg...

On Sunday, India’s latest bicycle sharing system was launched in New Delhi following on from the successes of Mysore, Bhopal, and other Indian cities, which have helped garner interest in cycling as an alternative mode of commute. The bike share system was launched by Venkaiah Naidu, Vice President of India, Dr. Harsh Vardhan, Minister of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change, and Meenakshi Lekhi, Member of Parliament, New Delhi.

Under the Smart Cities initiatives, NDMC launched this bicycle sharing system with SmartBike, a Hyderabad-based company which has teamed up with...

On average, two people die on Mumbai’s roads owing to traffic crashes every day. The city ranks seventh in the country in terms of absolute numbers of road traffic fatalities. Pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists are most vulnerable, and are involved in more than 90 percent of all road traffic fatalities. Young working populations – mostly men – are particularly affected.

Most crash data reports only talk about what happened – the crash itself. However, the political and societal influencers of road...

Last year, WRI India launched India Vision Zero, a road safety forum to deliberate on the challenges, opportunities, and solutions towards reducing road traffic fatalities in India. The event brought together representatives from the national and state governments, as well as city authorities and other stakeholders to share ideas and strategies for road safety reform in the country. India currently tops the list with the highest number of road traffic deaths in the world. By contextualising...

Like many African cities, Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, is at the turnstile of urbanisation. Recognising the need to augment the existing inadequate public transport, the authorities are considering implementing a bus rapid transit (BRT) system in the city. In the first week of October, a 13-member high-level delegation from Addis Ababa visited India with the aim of learning from similar projects in Indian cities. The...

This blog originally appeared on TheCityFix

Globally, 1.3 million people die each year in road traffic crashes. India, with only 2 percent of the global motor vehicle population, accounts for more than 10 percent of those fatalities. Further, in 2014 about 1.41 million people lost their lives on India’s roads—which is 3 percent greater than the fatalities in 2013. With one fatality roughly happening every 4 minutes, Indian road are considered some of most dangerous roads in the world.

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)...

Over 140,000 people lost their lives on our roads last year, giving India the dubious distinction of having the highest number of road accident victims in the world. As our country continues to motorise exponentially, this problem will only grow– unless we make urgent and far-reaching changes to our road safety approach.

Cyclists and Pedestrians Most at Risk

Any road safety strategy will mean nothing if it neglects to consider the mobility and safety of the most vulnerable road user groups, that is pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. In most major cities in India,...