Time for a re-look at road engineering

A series of horrific road accidents that have killed dozens of people over the last few weeks has jolted Telangana’s collective conscience. A sleeper bus travelling from Hyderabad to Bengaluru caught fire on a national highway near Kurnool, killing 19 passengers. In another accident, a lorry carrying gravel swerved to avoid a pothole and collided with a State-run passenger bus at Chevella, also killing 19 people. These incidents have drawn national attention, prompting the Supreme Court Committee on Road Safety to hold meetings with stakeholders in Hyderabad to address road safety issues.

The Cyberabad police are knocking on the doors of serial violators with numerous unpaid traffic challans. But to blame motorists and traffic rule violations alone would be a gross oversimplification of a national crisis. The real story lies deeper, in what we have chosen to ignore.

One factor that receives far less focus than it should is road engineering. The engineering model for a safe road includes road dividers, pavements, shoulders, traffic calming methods, and easily readable signages. Yet this basic aspect of road safety is often overlooked in the rush to put more vehicles on the road. The first step taken while widening roads in urban areas it to erase footpaths. Accessible footpaths remain hard to find in Hyderabad, like in other parts of the country.

A World Bank Environmental and Social Systems Assessment study of 2022 found that “more than half of the crash victims are pedestrians, cyclists, or motorcyclists, the so-called Vulnerable Road Users, often the poorer members of society. Road crashes also affect poor rural families disproportionately, with a greater percentage falling into economic distress after road crashes than other parts of the population.” The study identified the lack of footpaths and the obstruction of existing ones by temporary shops and parked vehicles as key factors in pedestrian casualties.

In Telangana’s cities, where there are pedestrian spaces, they are inevitably occupied — by cars, two-wheelers, hawkers, or food kiosks. Any action to relocate hawkers immediately degenerates into an us-versus-them spat that rattles politicians under whose protection these businesses thrive. The inability to negotiate this conflict keeps cities locked in a cycle where road safety is always compromised for political convenience. Roads which are unsafe for pedestrians are unsafe for motorists as well. There are solutions for relocating hawkers so that livelihoods are balanced with safety. One way is to strictly enforce designated vending zones rather than letting pop-up vending zones thrive.

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data (2023) shows that 27,586 pedestrians were killed in road accidents across the country. In Telangana, 1,554 pedestrians were killed. This is about 16% of all the road fatalities nationally and 20% of the road fatalities in Telangana. The NCRB does not tabulate data for accidents that can be linked to road engineering. It has broad categories such as ‘lack of road infrastructure’ and ‘vehicles parking at road shoulders’.

The road accident at Chevella also highlighted another factor in road engineering — the state of road maintenance. Discussions about road accidents too often focus solely on highway black spots rather than adopting a holistic view that considers all contributing factors. The State has to create a dedicated fund to map and maintain road infrastructure if it wants to lower fatalities on roads. India is a signatory to the Stockholm Declaration on Road Safety. The 2020 declaration called upon countries to halve road traffic deaths by 2030. The declaration calls upon countries to “include road safety and a safe system approach as an integral element of land use, street design, transport system planning and governance, especially for vulnerable road users and in urban areas, by strengthening institutional capacity with regard to road safety laws and law enforcement, vehicle safety, infrastructure improvements, public transport, post-crash care, and data.” Halfway through the goalpost, India and Telangana appear nowhere near reaching it.

To make Telangana’s roads safer, a multi-pronged approach is needed. This must include road engineering, social engineering, and an awareness campaign that is as pervasive and relentless as the anti-smoking campaign. The situation demands the same urgency, national mobilisation, and clarity of purpose.