Every year road crashes result in loss of lakhs of lives and serious injuries to crores of people. In most of the cases crashes occur either due to carelessness or due to lack of road safety awareness of the road user. Road Accidents are a major cause of concern to common people, government, insurers and other stakeholders.
Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways and MSME Sri Nitin Gadkari has been proactive in improving the condition of roads, building highways, inviting new technologies in road construction, use of plastics and other waste material in road construction. This will definitely improve road safety.
Currently Road accidents in India account for approximately 11% of the accident related deaths in the world. As per the Road Accidents Report for 2019. 4,49,002 accidents took place in the country during CY2019, leading to 1,51,113 deaths and 4,51,361 injuries. In percentage terms, the number of accidents decreased by 3.86 percent in 2019 as compared to CY2018, while accident – related deaths decreased by 0.20 percent and those injured decreased by 3.86 percent. Also huge numbers of incidents are not reported to the police. Hence the statistics do not reveal the correct picture of the accidents.
These road safety measures are vigorously taken by the Govt. of India from time to time. The Union Cabinet on 15.03.2010 approved the National Road Safety Policy. The National Road Safety Policy outlines the policy initiatives to be framed / taken by the Government at all levels to improve the road safety activities in the country.
The Policy Includes:
- Establish a Road Safety Information Database
- Ensure Safer Road Infrastructure
- Implementing Safety measures in Vehicles
- Implementing safety measures for Drivers
- Ensure Safer Road Infrastructure
- Safety of Vulnerable Road Users
- Road Traffic Safety Education and Training
- Enforcement of Safety Laws
- Emergency Medical Services for Road Accidents
- HRD & Research for Road Safety
- Strengthening Enabling Legal, Institutional and Financial Environment for Road Safety
- Implementation of the Strategy
Insurers are mainly worried about the road accidents for payment of compensation for third party insurance as well as personal accident policies. The Motor portfolio in insurance companies is bleeding due to the third party compensations. There are a lot of anomalies in litigation also which is witnessed by corrupt practices and time taking procedures. Insurers and intermediaries must play an important role in creating awareness for road safety. This will help in decreasing road accidents as well as their losses will also decrease.
Insurance Surveyors can also play an important role in ROAD Safety. They are an important stakeholders in whole process. Motor Insurance is an important portfolio for Surveyors also. They are responsible to assess the losses for road accidents and along with that they can give their opinion in order to avoid the accidents as well as suggest the ways and means to the insureds as well as the insureds.
Risk Management is only one and single measure which should be followed by one and all entity may be automobiles companies, individuals, other stakeholders to follow road safety guidelines. Risk Management will not only help in preventing death of precious human lives but also to safeguard loss of property. Country loses precious resources of people in these accidents.
Recently the central Govt. has announced several measures for minimizing / arresting the Road Accidents by bringing the scrappage policy of age old automobiles, electric vehicles, usage of BS VI vehicles only apart from making the highways and other roads to be constructed in the manner to avoid the accidents to the minimum, However, Risk Management by all the Stake Holders for self safety and avoiding the loss of resources is the only answer for the Road safety.
Risk Management Association of India is an NGO engaged in promotion of Risk Management Culture in India. We are doing lot of activities in the area of education and awareness. Recently we launched a Online course on Risk Management. More courses are in progress.
I would also like to thank IIISLA for joining hand and we can organize more events like this jointly in future.
