Experts highlight need of comprehensive road safety law

A group of experts today underlined the "urgent" need of a comprehensive national road safety legislation, citing huge human and economic losses every year due to road accidents.
Experts from different fields decoded the epidemic of road crashes in the country, in a media briefing organised by a non profit organisation SaveLife Foundation, emphasising on 4 E's engineering, education, enforcement and emergency care to bring down the number of casualties and economic losses.
"According to a report by Planning Commission, the colossal economic loss amounts to nearly 3 per cent of India's GDP," said Piyush Tewari, founder and CEO of SaveLife.

"We hope that the Road Transport and Safety Bill which aims to create the missing standards and operating mechanism to check road accidents will be introduced soon in the Parliament and address the four E's," he said.
Explaining shortcomings in road designs and engineering aspects of automobile contributing to road crashes, technical director of JP Research India Ravishankar Rajaraman emphasised on preparing a credible road crash data for formulating policies to save lives and economic costs.
Senior IPS officer Alok Mittal highlighted speed and drunken driving as two major factors for road fatalities stressing on strict enforcement to check it.

"Better road infrastructure to enforce speed limits with the help of technology and stringent measures like licence suspension in case of drunken driving need to be in place," he added.
Citing data, Dr Mahesh Joshi co-chairman of Emergency Medicine in India, said "more than 50 per cent of the deaths in road crashes occur despite treatable injuries due to delay or absence of medical help."
Batting for a 'road accident fund' to facilitate immediate medical help to accident victims, Dr Joshi pointed to lack of a proper emergency medical response system in most of the states in the country.