Nitin Gadkari-led Road Ministry announces Rs 11,000 crore corpus to curb fatalities

NEW DELHI: The government has earmarked Rs 11,000 crore for a plan to reduce the number of road fatalities. It will use this fund over the next five years to fix 726 black spots across the country where frequent accidents occur due to road engineering faults.

"The fund will be used to fix engineering defects across. At some of these spots over 100 people have lost their lives. We need to bring down road deaths by half," road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari said on Monday.

The road transport & highways ministry will launch a mobile application through which citizens will be able to upload photographs and details of black spots in their areas. Besides, the government is working on a proposal to impose penalties on companies and engineers responsible for faulty road designs. These provisions will be included in the upcoming roads safety bill, officials said.

This comes as part of a national action plan to reduce the number of road deaths by half in the next five years. Under the plan, the government is expected to soon introduce new two-wheeler safety norms.

India has the highest number of roads fatalities in the world, with one person being killed in a road mishap every four minutes. Last year, over 137,000 people were killed in road accidents and over 300,000 were crippled in 500,000 road mishaps.

The government has already drafted the guidelines for bystanders helping accident victims. A Good Samaritan policy will be revealed soon as part of which a crash fund will be set up to help such victims that will be used for emergency medical care.

"These guidelines will be sent to states," Gadkari said. The government plans to make it mandatory for all registered public and private hospitals not to detain bystanders bringing in the injured or demand any kind of payment from them unless they are family members of the injured. A lack of response could be also considered professional misconduct and attract disciplinary action.

More than half of the road fatalities in India involve two-wheeler riders.

As per the upcoming safety norms, all two-wheelers in India need to have the automatic headlamps on (AHO) similar to daytime running lamps in cars. There’s also a proposal to fit a sound device that can alert passersby and people around an accident site. The horn automatically honks when a vehicle meets with an accident.

In a letter written to the finance ministry, Gadkari had said that road deaths lead to an economic loss to the tune of 3 per cent of the GDP, apart from the social trauma. "It’s an economic loss of Rs 55,000 crore every year," he said. The ministry also plans to build cycle tracks along the national highways network.