Just a week back, Two persons were killed and 12 others are injured when a portion of an under construction bridge (a span of 400 ton) collapsed and fell on passing vehicle. Of the 12 injured, a man lost a leg while both legs of another one had to be amputated.Road mishaps have increased significantly in India since last few years. Road accidents in India claimed 130 thousand lives putting china behind in 2007. China is used to be ahead of us till 2 years ago. This is an alarming situation as we top the global list.
Roadway Transport and Highways secretary, Government of India mentioned that majority of the crashes are of “HIT & RUN” cases mostly occurred in major roads.
A study shows that there is a direct link between the increase in speed and fatal mishaps. Every 10% rise in speed results in 40 % rise in personal injury, 30% rise in fatal accidents and 20% rise in all accidents. Pedestrians will survive if they will be hit by a vehicle at less that 30KMPH but death becomes certain if the speed exceeds 50KMPH.
To overcome this, the government has decided to constitute a national and state level safety boards. The board will comprise of experts on road design, vehicle safety and health personal as members. The primary function of the board will be to ensure safety norms are followed by all stakeholders (road builders, maintenance agencies, vehicle manufacturers etc). Government also initiate talks with vehicle manufactures to introduce more sophisticated safety gadgets as implemented in western countries.
This would not be enough to ensure the significant decrease in accident numbers unless we analyze the Grass root information. Improved safety should be the ultimate goal of the government.
If a Vehicle runs over it, takes a turn on it or crash into it, there is a need of DOTs to map it. Across the country all most every DOTs are busy in capturing the roadway infrastructure data and getting ready their geospatial data layers. Even if many DOTs are taking GIS data into the field to update their old data to make their inventories more accurate.
Unfortunately, these data are only limited to transportation assets (road segments from intersection to intersection with names, function class, type… and traffic signs, guardrail etc.). Few DOTs are also using shortest route algorithm within in their GIS application.
To lower down in the Global List for Fatal Road accidents and improving road safety, a high level GIS & Mapping initiative at Government of India is needed:
- A Nationwide transportation data model
- Mapping the Roadway Infrastructure
- Addressing / Geo-coding
- Dynamic Segmentation
- Routing / Driving Directions
- Highways Monitoring System and Safety Program
- Real Time System Management (traffic, Congestion, Weather, Accidents etc.)
Thank you.
Sushanta Kabi
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