Tag: road safety

IIT Kharagpur Conducts Road Safety Training for Kolkata Police

IIT Kharagpur conducts Road Safety Training for the officers of Kolkata Traffic Police & Transport Department, initiating capacity building in road safety through four rounds of training program. The training program was inaugurated yesterday in Police Training School (PTS), Kolkata by Shri V K Goyal, Learned Commissioner of Kolkata Police, in the presence of Prof. V K Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur; Shri Hari Kishore Kusumakar, Additional Commissioner of Police, Kolkata, several senior officials of Kolkata Police and experts from IIT Kharagpur. Around 200 officers of Kolkata Police are being trained by the team of faculty members from IIT Kharagpur that includes Prof. Bhargab Maitra, Dr. Arkopal Goswami, Dr. Swati Maitra and Dr. Madhumita Paul.

Prof. Bhargab Maitra, Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Kharagpur stated, “IIT Kharagpur has been working closely with all related departments and providing them support for reducing road accidents and resulting fatalities. This training is organised, especially keeping in mind the roles and responsibilities of the officers of Kolkata Traffic Police in enhancing road safety scenario in the Kolkata city.”

IIT Kharagpur has been contributing in several areas related to road safety for the state of West Bengal including speed management, emergency responses, enforcement, strategies for handling traffic congestion, innovative traffic control measures etc. A speed management policy and roadmap has been developed by IIT Kharagpur with support from Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP) which has already been accepted, in principle, by the Government of West Bengal. IIT Kharagpur has also been entrusted by the Transport Department, Government of West Bengal to develop a Road Safety Vision document and roadmap for reducing road accidents and fatalities in unison with the Transport Department, Police Department, Road Development Department, and Health and Family Welfare Department and Education Department.

Prof. V K Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur, remarked, “I am extremely happy to be a part of this inaugural session on Road Safety Training for the Officers of the Kolkata Police. Road safety is a major global, national and regional concern. It is our individual as well as collective responsibility to do our best for reducing road crashes and other resulting fatalities. The speed management policy and roadmap will be instrumental in addressing safety issues due to over speeding and mitigating the results to road fatalities. The present training program is focused on several key aspects of speed management and implementation of emergency responses identifying risk prone areas around the city. This program will act as a protocol guideline for an organized traffic system. IIT Kharagpur has been involved in several capacities with nearly all related organisations for improving the transportation systems of Kolkata and the team of Kolkata traffic police for the grand success of this training programme which will be beneficial to the Kolkata Police to improve road safety issues of the city.”

Media Coverage :

PTI Times of India Telegraph
The Print Dainik Jagran Hindustan Times (Bengali)
News 18 (Bengali) Amader Bharat ETV Bharat
Career 360 IBC 24 Times of India
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By : Poulami Mondal, Digital & Creative Media Executive (Creative Writer)
Email: poulami.mondal@iitkgp.ac.in, media@iitkgp.ac.in, Ph. No.: +91-3222-282007

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Scientific & Uniform Speed Management to Reduce Fatal Road Accidents

Highlights :

  • The institute made recommendations based on road geometry & traffic characteristics
  • The fatalities in road accidents have increased by 1.3%
  • Initiate Audit of existing speed management measures, study of accidents and speed monitoring

India has always been on the edge when it comes to road safety and speed management. Even with new policy reforms and measures to curb road accident, a total of 3,66,138 road accidents caused the loss of 1,31,714 lives in 2020 as per the statistics of Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH). 1.2 lakh deaths were reported by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) for the same year as death caused by accidents. The persistently high annual death toll brings into question the country’s ability to meet Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3.6, which aims to halve the fatalities and injuries from road traffic accidents by 2030. Despite Covid-induced restrictions, on-road travel accident severity value i.e. persons killed per 100 accidents was 36 in 2020, up from 33.7 in 2019.

Researchers from IIT Kharagpur has recently submitted recommendations for scientific and uniform nationwide speed management to reduce fatal road accidents to the West Bengal government. It has accepted the suggestions in principle but there is a need for nationwide and uniform implementation. In its policy document, IIT Kharagpur recommended the constitution of state and district road safety councils comprising of various departments regarding scientific fixing of speed limits and erection of road signage, engineering initiatives, audit of existing speed management measures, study of accidents, speed monitoring, strict implementation of guidelines and mass public awareness about road safety.

Professor Bhargab Maitra, Civil Engineering Department, IIT Kharagpur who led a team of professors in formulating the document said, “We have made the recommendations based on road geometry, traffic characteristics and roadside environment. Although there are several Indian Roads Congress (IRC) guidelines which may be followed for better traffic management, the lack of a comprehensive and uniform speed management policy is an important concern in the Indian context.”

“In 2021, MoRTH proposed a reduction of road accidents and fatalities by 50 per cent by 2024. Speed management may provide the scope of bringing down the severity of road accidents. Keeping in mind the reality of traffic on Indian roads, it is essential to revisit and set appropriate speed limits to enhance road safety,” he added.

Times Of India

The document submitted by the Institute observed that a majority of the road stretches in the country, both in urban and rural areas, have mixed traffic, absence of lane discipline, uncontrolled access, roadside development and activities and a significant share of vulnerable road users.

Quoting the statistics of MoRTH, Prof. Maitra said, “Speeding caused more than 72 per cent of road accidents and 69 per cent of road accident fatalities in 2020. Also, there is a need to curb speed limits near potentially risky areas such as shopping zones, schools and hospitals. Only a few stretches have wide paved shoulders, median barriers, sufficient clear zones, access roads, good alignment and intersection treatments which are important engineering aspects to ensure road safety.

New global and country-level estimates suggest that routinely wearing helmets and seat belts, obeying speed limits, and avoiding driving drunk could save between 347,000 and 540,000 lives worldwide every year, said a study published in The Lancet.

“Road accidents are a leading cause of death and injuries in India, which tops the world in the number of fatalities due to such mishaps. 4.5 lakh road accidents took place in 2019, resulting in more than 1.51 lakh deaths. Besides creating enormous social causes for families, road traffic injuries put a heavy burden on health services and the national economy. Keeping in mind the reality of traffic on Indian roads, it is essential to revisit and set appropriate speed limits to enhance road safety. Hence, the implementation of IIT Kharagpur’s recommendations will be beneficial with the ongoing massive road development across the country.” he stated.

Media Coverage : 

The Print Business Standard Navbharat Times
Business World Hindu Business Line Indian Nation
IBC24    

Contact : Prof. Bhargab Maitra, Civil Engineering Department, IIT Kharagpur; Email- bhargab@civil.iitkgp.ac.in; Ph no. : +91-3222-283458

Content Writer : Poulami Mondal, Digital & Creative Media Executive (Creative Writer)
Email: poulami.mondal@iitkgp.ac.in, media@iitkgp.ac.in, Ph. No.: +91-3222-282007

Follow us: Facebook – IIT Kharagpur; Twitter – @IITKgp;  Instagram – @iit.kgp; LinkedIn – Indian Institute of Technology
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Hit the road, but carefully

An IIT Kharagpur road safety audit shows that unless speed is regulated, good mobility could mean more accidents

If worn-out, crater-ridden, submerged stretches are the only image that flash in your mind when you think of ‘killer roads’, you are just monsoon-weary. Killer roads are also those gleaming blacktop surfaces stretching out for miles in between cities, towns, or even within cities, that lure motorists into putting that little bit of extra pressure on the accelerator.

Speed, obviously, kills. With the rapid modernization of road infrastructure, India is thus seeing an alarming increase in the number of fatalities on road. The number of road accidents in India today is the highest ever in recorded history -a 53.9% increase over the last decade, and nearly a ten-fold increase since 1970.

“We have made the surface good for speed, but the associated geometry is not able to support high speed. Also, the people using the roads are unruly and traffic  operations are happening in a haphazard manner,” says Prof. Sudeshna Mitra of the Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Kharagpur.

Prof. Mitra specializes in Traffic and Transportation Engineering, with an emphasis on Road Traffic Safety, Data Analytics in Traffic and Transportation, and Sustainable Transportation Planning and Design. Widely consulted by the government and private organizations on transport and road safety matter, Prof. Mitra and her team has recently submitted their report on “Road Safety Audit of NH60 and NH117 and capacity building on Road Safety issues in the State of West Bengal”.

The result of this study, in fact, confirms Prof. Mitra’s statement. Of the two National Highways in the study – NH60 and NH117 – the former has a greater “average operating speed”. In other words, NH60 ensures greater ‘mobility’ – a factor that delineates the importance of the road (the other being ‘accessibility’). However, the “…number of crashes and fatal crashes are also more on NH60 with a very high percentage of head-on collisions,” says the report.

“Speed is a problem,” says Prof. Mitra. “We have seen that speed and the number of accidents/fatalities are not in a linear relationship. For example, if the chance of fatality at 30 km/hr is 10%, at a speed of 60 km/hr, the probability does not double. The chance of fatality is about  80%,” she argues on the basis of the findings of the speed management report of OECD/ECMT Transport Research Centre (2006).

Of course, the condition of the roads and the stopping time matters for safe operations. And this is where the technicalities kick in. For example, even for placing temporary barriers, one has to take into consideration the technicalities of their placement such that appropriate meandering of traffic could take place resulting in speed reduction. The police in this regard would need to consult PWD engineers to man the road operations.Prof. Mitra suggests greater technical consultation – at the planning stage itself. “For new roads, we should start audit from alignment planning, detailed design, and during the construction. For existing roads, we can concentrate on the existing problems and propose how to operate them better.”

For both NH60 and NH117, Prof. Mitra and her team have provided their feedback and are now hoping that they are implemented. Apart from drawing attention to sharp horizontal curves with restricted visibility, unsignalized intersections, they have also highlighted the role of vehicular size and pedestrian behaviour in causing accidents.

But her insistent plea is the need to regulate speed and implement speed zoning on highways. This is especially needed when a highway is passing through a town or built-up area where the functional characteristics of the road changes, and high interaction with pedestrians is expected. Prof. Mitra argues for proper recording of accident data. “We get an idea of the design deficiency by assessing whether it is a head-on collision or rear end collision,” she says. Prof. Mitra is happy that the authorities are more pro-active than before about road safety and they are willing to seek out the academia for consultation. However, implementation is still weak, she says. Also important is evaluation after the recommended measures are implemented.