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Bhubaneswar, Sept 19: The experts who attended a conference on road safety at Mayfair hotel in Bhubaneswar said that unscientific construction of roads was the major infrastructural issue that led to massive number of deaths due to road accidents Monday.
Using a combination of the Haddon Matrix method, a most commonly used pattern in the field of injury prevention, and considering the three major errors that lead to an accident — human errors, vehicles and infrastructural issues — for analysis, the expert panel came to this conclusion.
Charlotte Berglund, an expert from Sweden who works with Sweco International AB, Ravishankar Rajaraman, Technical Director with JP Research Private Institute, and R R Bohidar, a senior engineer who works with the Orissa government were some of the panelists at the conference who presented their assessments on Indian roads.
Swedish specialist Berglund highlighted the need for a proper road safety audit to effectively handle the chaos.
She said: “Developed countries are already doing road safety audits for addressing. These audits consist of three stages — pre-construction, construction and post-construction. These play a pivotal role in identifying the blackspots and infrastructural issues.” She emphasised on the use of post-construction audits that help massively reduce road mishaps and said it was high time for India to use it.
“Our crash analysis or road accident analysis on major Indian cities found that most of the pedestrian accidents were due to infrastructural issues. An analysis of the major blackspots also revealed that many of the road developments are done without proper analysis,” Ravishankar Rajaraman said.
However, Bohidar retorted and told Orissa POST that the state was already using an effective road safety action plan and conducting road safety audits.
“We have identified 79 blackspots on state roads and 115 on national highways. The department concerned has already taken steps to remove 68 of those on state roads by July, 2017. We’ve also notified the national highway authorities,” he added. According to WHO estimates, 207,551 lives were lost in India due to traffic deaths
