#Protect the Precious- Human Life - One Life

Every life matters....

Global status report on road safety 2023 (who.int) highlights that road traffic accidents are the leading cause of death of children and youth aged 5 to 29 years. Two-thirds of deaths occur among people of the working age (18– 59 years) causing significant socio-economical loss to not only their families but also ultimately to the nation. More than half of the fatalities are associated with vulnerable road users including pedestrians, motorcyclists and cyclists as they remain dangerously exposed to high-speed vehicular traffic, sharing same road cross section. 9 in 10 deaths occur in low- and middle income countries. Most people in low-income countries continue to face the highest risk of death per population. Road accident fatalities and related injuries remain a major global health and developmental challenge

Here, I choose to share my personal experience on how road accidents take a huge toll on the emotional, physical, economic and social aspects of the affected lives.

On the outskirts of Pune, a young man of merely 25 years old lay in a pool of his own blood, unconscious. He had crashed into a heavy truck now looming over him. Fortunately, a rickshaw driver recognized him to be from same area based on his motorbike’s number plate. ?He, at once stopped to help him out, when an orthopaedic surgeon was passing by who immediately called an ambulance from his hospital and eventually performed the required emergency operations of vital organs over the next few days.? The accident was so near fatal, that he remained unconscious for nearly two to three weeks in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). He, along with his distraught parents, have lost nearly an entire year trying to recover fully from this incident. This is a real story of my young cousin, from last year. His life could be saved by these kind people due to the timely emergency help. No parent can ever dream of such a fatal accident upon their beloved children.

I strongly believe that every road user has to reach to home safely by ensuring that the road networks has to be infallible for safety. ?As we know that road accidents may happen due to various reasons such as driver’s mistake due to lack of knowledge or distractions, driving under the influence, road infrastructure, safety engineering and construction issues, lack of warning signs/ road markings or adverse weather conditions. Whatever is the reason, it is within human control to avoid/ reduce accidents to a larger extent. The room for improvement is always big. One can validate if there is a scope for improvement to avoid accidents through right quality of design and construction of road infrastructure, correct implementation of safety engineering aspects, formation of right legislations and its strict adherence by all road users, quick access to emergency services, medical intervention on time and last but not lease, the right behaviour on road by all drivers. ?

As we say, it takes a whole village to raise a child, same way, it takes the co-operation from all stakeholders to save a life. No doubt, we are superbly proud of India’s enormous progress in constructing advanced road networks to improve interconnectivity across India. Now it is high time to accept our own social responsibility to reduce road accidents so that precious life could be saved. Whether you are the government, administrative officer, lawyer, land use planner, engineer, contractor, maintenance agent, emergency service team, doctor, you have a key role to play. Adhering to road safety is the most important social service one has, as it directly impacts the sustenance of this precious life, of own and others.

It is saddening to digest someone’s unnatural and untimely death lying on the road, unattended doesn’t matter whichever the reason. Once the life has gone, it can’t come back. Let’s do what is required. How can it be made easier to do our best and to do it dutifully? If everyone does a small positive act themselves, it will have profound impact and will be beneficial to all humankind.

Safety is more about the attitude and behaviour. Over the next few weeks, through short stories /case studies, let’s learn how we can contribute to the greater cause of “everyone reaches home safely”. ?

If we believe in incremental continuous improvement, following key points of reflections can be considered to start with:

·??????? How human cantered design principles can help improve road safety further? As accidents are mostly associated with vulnerable road users and particularly youths, can their needs be understood and addressed before fixing the road cross section, during land use planning stage?

·??????? Can sustainable transport principles be implemented effectively to improve safety of road users?? How the end-to-end connectivity be improved such that people love to use public transport due to its convenience? How its quality and safety be enhanced so that it becomes socially inclusive in real sense (for upper class of society)? Can we lead by example to advocate the use of public transport?

·??????? Can the road cross section proactively consider needs of all diverse road users, heterogeneous vehicles and not just car users? ?

·??????? Can traffic legislations be enforced more strictly to promote road safety? Can the driving license tests be conducted more rigorously to ensure that the Highways Code or equivalent is followed without fail by everyone? How the road users be trained (ideally in their local languages) to enable them to use the modern road infrastructure safely?

·??????? How advanced digital intervention be utilized more effectively to manage traffic dynamically in case of emergencies or temporary traffic management?

·??????? Can road safety audits be conducted at every key design stage by law more effectively? Can these lessons learnt be widely shared during safe driving training campaigns?

·??????? One of the major reason of accidents is speed. The severity and likelihood of the possible mishap increases disproportionately with speed. Can we be more conscious to manage our time judiciously to avoid haste on roads. The main contradiction is that speeding can actually waste more time than driving using safe speed due to unwarranted accidents and its aftermaths.

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Stay tuned for more personalized anecdotes, experiences, observations on the journey towards safer roads...

One life! and every life matters.

Disclaimer:

The experiences, views and opinions expressed here are totally of the author and stated here out of compassion. They are not related to or do not represent any organisation or Institution as such where the author has worked before or has been working in any capacity. ?