Evoking sharp criticism from specialists, who questioned the Centre over lack of enough strolling infrastructure, the Union authorities has instructed Parliament that pedestrian deaths within the nation happen principally as a result of individuals don’t comply with the norms laid down for strolling and crossing roads throughout site visitors.

Nitin Gadkari’s reply in Parliament

In his written reply to a query by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP from Uttar Pradesh, Brij Lal, the minister submitted to the Upper House, “No study on why pedestrian deaths happen is available or has been conducted. Generally, such deaths occur due to pedestrians not following norms laid down for walking along roads or trying to cross roads during traffic. Accidents also occur due to over-speeding vehicles.”

PTI

Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari additionally stated road crashes claimed the lives of 23,483 pedestrians in 2020. While by way of absolute numbers such fatalities had been much less through the Covid yr when there was restriction on automobile motion as in comparison with 2019, there may be an alarming pattern of how the share of pedestrian deaths in all highway fatalities elevated from 10.5% in 2016 to just about 18% throughout 2020.

No research but on pedestrian deaths trigger

The ministry additionally positioned on report that the federal government has, to date, not performed any research to analyse the causes of pedestrian deaths within the nation. “To prevent road accidents and save lives, the Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Act, 2019 passed by Parliament, focuses on road safety and includes, inter-alia, hike in penalties for traffic violations, electronic monitoring of the same, enhanced penalties for juvenile driving, computerisation/automation of vehicle fitness and driving, tests, recall of defective vehicles, streamlining the third-party insurance and payment of increased compensation for hit and run cases etc. The Amendment has strengthened the law to improve the road safety scenario and reduce loss of lives. However, no study on why pedestrian deaths happen is available or has been conducted,” the reply said.

BCCL

Road accident knowledge  

This comes as studies advised that in 2020 India recorded 1.2 lakh circumstances of “deaths due to negligence relating to road accidents”. In different phrases, 328 individuals are dropping their lives every single day on common, based on authorities knowledge.

Though the 1.2 lakh deaths in 2020 was less than the fatalities in the pre-pandemic year which noticed 1.36 lakh lived being misplaced on the roads, the numbers are alarming because the nation was beneath full lockdown from March 25 to May 31 as a result of COVID-19 pandemic, throughout which the motion in public house was “very limited”.

As many as 3.92 lakh lives have been misplaced in three years in deaths resulting from negligence associated to highway accidents, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) revealed in its annual ‘Crime India’ report for 2020. While 1.2 lakh deaths had been recorded in 2020, the figures stood at 1.36 lakh in 2019 and 1.35 lakh in 2018, the info present.

PTI

Experts’ sharp reactions

Reacting sharply to the Centre’s reply on pedestrian deaths, Kamal Soi, member of the National Road Safety Council, stated the government’s approach to urban and safe mobility was wrong.

“This is a ridiculous and absurd answer and I, despite being a member of the government of India’s road safety council, do not endorse this. We have not created the necessary infrastructure for pedestrians and still we have the audacity to blame them for their own deaths. It is the sole responsibility of all the agencies to create and ensure adequate infrastructure for safe pedestrian movement. The world is moving towards walking and cycling as a last-mile connectivity mode and here we have lawmakers having such a fundamentally wrong approach to policies,” Soi added.

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Shreya Gadepalli, managing trustee at Urban Works Institute, stated designing cities for individuals slightly than vehicles might be certain that “streets are full of life, not deaths”.  

“Road crashes have become so common that they hardly evoke any reaction in us anymore. There is disconnect in the way we design our streets and the way we want our drivers to behave. You may have often come across road signs that read: “speed thrills but kills”. But if we would like individuals to drive slower, why will we design streets as racing tracks? Why do we’ve got highways inside cities that turn out to be limitations for individuals to cross? Why is an try and even barely widen footpaths seen as an encroachment on house that “rightfully” belongs to motorists,” she added.

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