Road Safety Week

We celebrate Road safety week every year some time in January. I have been part of road safety week celebrations too. Hence I would like to give a generalized description for all the road safety campaigns happening here as – ‘Dear driver, it is you. It is you who are the sole reason for all the accidents.’

I just felt it like a blame game. Put the blame on the uneducated driver, sit and enjoy your cup of coffee, keep discussing. Now you may point towards the accident statistics. Please tell me how many of those accidents were investigated in detail by a team that consists of a traffic design expert and a mechanical engineer? I firmly believe that too less of those accidents so investigated will point to faulty driving.

You tell me that accidents cause death. I have seen it too. But is it just the accident that caused death in the last few road accidents you have heard of? Are you sure? Tell me what was the crash worthiness of the car that led to the death of the people you know. There are a lot of websites where you can compare n number of cars before you select one. How many of those websites tell you the crash worthiness of the same car they have been blabbering about? Or are all the cars plying in your country crash worthy?

How good are the roads on which you drive your cars? How well have they been engineered? How many curves and bends in the roads could have been avoided if they were well engineered? How beautiful would have been driving if those buildings and structures that cause blind spots in busy roads were removed?  How well do your roads support the heaviest of traffic on it? How many potholes on roads could have been avoided if the roads had been built with enough strength to support the traffic and also taking into consideration the climatic conditions of the area? How many accidents have happened when the driver just for the love of his vehicle wanted  to avoid the holes on the road?

No facilities, or helpline – This becomes the everyday’s normal. Accident victims lay on the road helpless. No help from anywhere. No emergency units. At least in accident prone areas, there should be some emergency care facilities for the victims. Saddest part is that the passersby never really care, nobody is willing to help, or even give a lift. Nobody wants to be stuck in the humdrum of cases and other paraphernalia related to road accidents. People are busy. I feel, this apathy has killed more people than accidents itself. But still, there are good people left, I meet a few here and there and I am grateful for that.

Poor understanding of physics - momentum is what affects your braking, not your speed, so maybe two gentlemen on a bike would require more braking at 40, than you alone while still at 60, train your brain to make the calculations correctly. Train your brain to be cautious when you come across situations you are not used to; such as driving an overloaded vehicle.

If we apply the analogy of swiss cheese model to the road accidents, we can say that the road accidents are caused if flaws in all of the layers align together. If any one of the layers works correctly, the accidents or the injuries caused due to them can be avoided.
For example,  consider the case of a collision between a car and train at an unmanned railway crossing. Thousands of cars have crossed through the same level crossing without colliding with trains. Here, when the collision occurred there are other contributory causes including negligence of the driver, or may be the horn of the train was not audible to the driver. Here we can say that the fault in engineering control aligned with the fault of the driver resulting in the accident.

An option is a multi pronged strategy to address the issue of road safety based on 4 Es of Road Safety: (i) Education (ii) Enforcement (iii) Engineering (roads as well as vehicles) (iv) Emergency care. In emergency care, I suggest an Unified Free National Medical Distress Call Number so that a person from Karnataka will not be confused on whom to call for help if he meets with an accident in Punjab.