A safe journey on Indian roads has become a matter of survival rather than convenience. Every day, headlines report collisions, pile‑ups, and preventable deaths that tear families apart. This is not fate or bad luck; it is the result of how we design, fund, regulate, and use our roads. Unless we treat road safety as a public‑health emergency and a governance priority, this “silent epidemic” will continue.
Across the world, especially in advanced economies, a clear shift has taken place: accidents are now seen as system failures, not just individual mistakes. Scandinavian countries, for instance, have adopted ambitious programmes such as Vision Zero, which aim to eliminate road‑traffic deaths altogether. They tightened engineering standards for roads and vehicles, improved enforcement through technology, invested consistently in safety infrastructure, and above all, treated each death as unacceptable. As a result, they have drastically reduced fatalities even as traffic volumes have grown.
India’s experience has been very different. Our cities and highways showcase modern engineering on one side and chaotic, unsafe conditions on the other. While some reforms have begun—stricter penalties, amendments to the Motor Vehicles Act, and expansion of highway networks—deep structural gaps remain. Institutional responsibility is fragmented across multiple departments; data on accidents is often incomplete or unreliable; enforcement is inconsistent; and safety is rarely integrated into the design of roads, vehicles, or public‑transport systems from the very beginning.
To change this trajectory, India needs a comprehensive, long‑term approach. First, institutional capacity for road safety must be strengthened. A dedicated, empowered national road‑safety authority with clear accountability, adequate budget, and professional staffing is essential. Similar agencies are required at state and metropolitan levels to implement policies, coordinate with police, transport, health, and urban‑development departments, and ensure that safety is not treated as an afterthought.
Second, funding and transparency are crucial. Road‑safety interventions—such as safer junction designs, pedestrian facilities, crash barriers, and speed‑calming measures—are not prohibitively expensive, but they do require steady, ring‑fenced investment. Every rupee collected through traffic penalties and road‑related cesses should be transparently channelled into safety programmes, emergency‑care systems, driver training, and public awareness campaigns, with clear public reporting on outcomes.
Third, India must fully harness modern technology. Automated driving‑tests and licensing systems can minimise corruption and ensure that only competent drivers receive licences. Intelligent traffic‑management systems, speed cameras, and red‑light violation detectors can enforce rules without selective or discretionary policing. Data from crashes, hospitals, and insurance claims should be integrated into a national road‑safety database so that black spots are identified quickly and rectified systematically.
Equally important is public participation and awareness. No amount of infrastructure investment can compensate for reckless behaviour. Wearing helmets and seat belts, respecting speed limits, avoiding drunk driving, and yielding to pedestrians are basic practices that must become part of our civic culture. Schools, colleges, and workplaces should treat road safety as a core life skill, not a one‑time campaign. Media, including transport‑focused platforms like ours, must continuously highlight both good practices and systemic failures, keeping pressure on authorities and sensitising citizens.
Implementation, however, remains the biggest hurdle. Coordination between central and state governments, and among departments within each government, is often weak. Laws may exist on paper but remain poorly enforced on the ground. Regular audits of highways, city roads, and transport systems are needed, along with time‑bound action plans to fix deficiencies. Setting measurable targets—for example, reducing fatalities by a fixed percentage every few years—and publicly tracking progress can improve accountability.
Finally, road safety should be seen as an ongoing process, not a one‑time project. Continuous monitoring, periodic policy reviews, and independent evaluations are essential. Specialised agencies for investigation and safety audits can study serious crashes in detail and recommend systemic changes, just as aviation accidents are examined. Lessons must feed back into road design, vehicle regulations, driver training, and enforcement protocols.
If India is to protect its citizens and sustain economic growth, it cannot afford to ignore the human and financial cost of road accidents. A safe journey should not be a matter of privilege or luck; it must be a guaranteed right for every road user—driver, rider, passenger, and pedestrian. By combining strong institutions, transparent funding, modern technology, strict yet fair enforcement, and an informed, responsible public, we can move towards roads where reaching home safely is the norm, not a daily gamble.
– Dr S Prasad
Retd Addl Transport Commissioner
