World Health Organisation director addresses India on road safety

Dimapur, June 18 (EMN): As part of Indian Road Safety Campaign (IRSC), Solve Foundation conducted a webinar on June 13 from 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm with Dr. Etienne Krug, director of WHO (NVI) and chairperson of United Nations Road Safety Collaboration, to discuss Mission 50 by 2030.

The session was attended by road safety ambassadors from 23 different countries comprising 180 participants from various sectors all around the world, an update from Solve Foundation vice president Deepanshu Gupta stated.

The session comprehensively covered the five pillars of “Global Decade of Action- road infrastructure, quality of vehicles, behaviour of people and trauma care, and emergency relief system, to reduce road accidents by 50% by the year 2030,” the report stated. It also covered the importance of youth in making vehicle policies that take into consideration public traffic as well as awareness tactics for the vulnerable groups.

In his speech, Dr. Krug suggested applying the strategies used in Sweden, New Zealand and Australia to reduce the number of road accidents even though numbers of vehicles are increasing. He has also insisted on the necessity of policies by top-level political decision making and intervention to work as the number of vehicles keep on increasing along with corresponding number of road fatalities.

Dr. Krug also stressed on important component role of technology as it is involved in both micro and macro-level policy designing. “Along with technological advances, we should also work at the ground level,” he stated. He added that vehicles should be designed, keeping in mind the protection of vulnerable groups especially children playing along the roadside, people walking/cycling.

For an effective emergency relief system, given India’s heterogeneous traffic grid, Dr. Krug has suggested bystander training.

Dr. Krug hoped that there would be strong attention to the importance of tackling safety on road and continue to improve and enforce the laws, with a particular thought for vulnerable road users (walking, cycling, etc.). He concluded by saying: “I hope that we will approach the issue from a sustainability angle which means making sure that we don’t promote transportation by cars but also by other means.”

The webinar series has completed nine sessions with prominent speakers like Dr. Eva Molnar, former director of UNECE; Rashmi Urdhwareshe, director of ARAI; Abhay Damle, former joint secretary of Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, India; Piyush Tiwari, CEO and founder of Save LIFE Foundation; and IV Rao, former senior MEO Engg and director of MACE; and attended by 1200 + participants from different sectors and around the globe.

IRSC is the road safety initiative of the Solve Foundation. It works across policy, law, medical, awareness, technical domains in its efforts to attack the problem of lives being lost due to road accidents. It is the largest youth-led organisation working across 50+ cities with 40,000+ volunteers while leading initiatives of central and state governments, the report stated.