On 4 September, we received the unfortunate news that former Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry had been killed in a car accident. Mistry was travelling from Ahmedabad to Mumbai in a Mercedes car, which hit a road divider and dashed against a retention wall. Many reasons have been explored for why this tragedy happened, the two that are most talked about being reckless overtaking by the driver, and that Mistry was not wearing a seatbelt in the backseat. Whilst these are potentially the reasons for this particular crash, there is a bigger picture here that needs to be addressed.
According to a recent ADSI (Accidental Deaths and Suicides) report presented by the National Crime Records Bureau, deaths due to road crashes have remained consistently high, and even growing, over the past decade. Over 1.5 lakh Indians lost their lives due to such crashes in 2021, a figure that has remained relatively consistent over the past five years. The numbers for 2020 were lower as Covid-19 lockdowns meant that there were fewer cars on the road, despite which 1.3 lakh lives were lost. Consistently high numbers highlight what the actual problem on our roads is. Not human error, not driver attitudes, but the way Indian roads are designed.
The Mumbai-Ahmedabad Highway has been described as one of the most crowded and badly designed highways in the country. The width of the south-bound lane on the Charoti flyover is 10.5 metres but gets narrowed to about 7 metres on the bridge which is built over the Surya river. Three lanes become two. With a complete absence of warning signs on this fact, this transition to the bridge is by design, unsafe. Add to that a high amount of overtaking from the left side of the road due to the large number of trucks that insist on driving on the right side, this area becomes outright dangerous for any driver. This is where the accident took place.
Approximately 92,000 people lost their lives on National and State Highways in 2021, according to the aforementioned ADSI report. Highways are designed for rapid, uninterrupted vehicle movement. Without proper road engineering and enforcement, crashes become far more likely. Given the high-speed nature of these roads, these crashes are more likely to be fatal. It is true that if the passengers in the back seat were wearing seat belts, the accident may not have been fatal. It is important that we advocate for such measures, those that reduce fatality rates of crashes. Making the road safer by design on the other hand, can avoid these crashes altogether.
Was the area a blackspot?
According to a technical paper on the identification of accident blackspots by Shawon Aziz and Dr Sewa Ram, a blackspot (often synonymously known as a crash hotspot) is a section of road where the frequency of occurrence of several types of accidents or a particular type of accident is comparatively higher than other similar sections on different roads. Accidents repeatedly occur in these areas due to faults and inconsistencies in road engineering, leading to the creation of an ambiguous road environment that fails to provide proper guidance to road users. Any accident that occurs in a blackspot cannot be seen as a problem associated with driver attitude or human error; it is always a flaw in design.
According to a Free Press Journal report, in the past two years, 100 people have died and about 50 have sustained injuries between Manor (Palghar) and Achad (Gujarat) on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad Highway. This 52-kilometre stretch has been known to have about a dozen crash hotspots, including the bridge over the Surya river. The design flaw can be seen clearly — a three-lane road on the Highway gets reduced to two due to an oddly designed divider over the river. Whilst there is no exact definition of how many deaths in what stretch of area constitute a hotspot, the entire stretch of road and the bridge over the Surya river is at the very least extremely dangerous, and requires urgent redesign.
Where do we go from here?
Put simply, our roads need to be designed according to Vision Zero principles. Vision Zero is a global movement, first adopted in Sweden, that aims to end traffic-related fatalities and serious injuries by taking a systemic approach to road safety. Underlying the Vision Zero strategy is the Safe Systems Approach — a holistic safety approach that shifts responsibility from the people using roads to the people designing them, integrating core management and action areas to create a safe mobility system forgiving of human error.
In 2017, Vision Zero was brought to India for the first time with Haryana Vision Zero. NASSCOM Foundation, in collaboration with WRI India and Raahgiri Foundation, ran this project for three years. In that time, approximately 80 blackspots were rectified. Over 1,500 lives were saved, with another few thousand that would have sustained serious injury, based on past trends. Had the project ran for a longer period, hundreds more blackspots could have been rectified and thousands more lives saved. Since its discontinuation, death numbers in Haryana have gone back to levels before Vision Zero. Blackspot identification, along with rectification (in the form of engineering and redesign of these roads) is not as simple as it sounds, but there is clear evidence that it works. For any state, it will be a prolonged process that will require serious investment. In the long term, it will have significant economic benefits and will save many, many lives.
There were many ways to avoid Cyrus Mistry’s unfortunate passing. Seatbelts in the backseat would have likely saved his life. Air bags in the rear part of the car might have avoided the fatality of the backseat passengers. However, neither of these address the root of the problem. Lack of road safety in India is an epidemic and needs to be addressed as such. Major improvements in identification of blackspots, accompanied with time and investment dedicated to proper engineering, is the fundamental solution to our traffic fatality crisis.
Akash V Basu is an Associate at Raahgiri Foundation. Sarika Panda Bhatt is a Director at Nagarro. Views expressed are personal.
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