Er. Hemant Tiwari
Fifth UN Global Road Safety week 2019 (May 6- May 12, 2019) kicks up with the theme “Save Lives: Speak Up”. It demands for strong leadership for road safety worldwide to help achieve SDGs and other road safety targets. This program is the continuity of First UN Road Safety week started from 2007 with theme “Save Lives: Youth Road Safety”.
After that three road safety weeks have been observed at 2013. 2015 and 2017 with theme Pedestrian Safety, Save Kids Life and Slow Down respectively. More than 30 events have been planned by various organization throughout the country during this period. This will helps in improving road safety either by spreading awareness or enhancing technical knowledge among the stakeholder on the field.
Road Safety is one of the most common and critical issue globally as well as nationally these days. Supporting it with the facts, road crashes is the eights leading cause of death globally taking life of 1.35 million peoples annually. Even severe is the fact that it is the leading cause of death among 5-29 age group. The condition is worst among middle and low income countries, as 93% of the world fatalities occurs in low and middle income countries.
The most vulnerable road user comprises of pedestrian, cyclist and motorcyclists, which accounts 54% of the total fatalities (WHO Global Status Report, 2018). With this background UN Declared this decade as Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 with target of reduction of 50% fatalities in the period. This target is also addressed in Sustainable Development Goal.
Looking at the Nepalese context of road crashes and fatalities; it’s on darker side as 2,541 road traffic fatalities occurs in 10, 961 road crashes in the last fiscal year of 204/75 as per statistics of Traffic Police. The fatalities number rises by around 6.5% analyzing the last consecutive two years. These figures are heavily influenced by under reporting and under recording as evident from WHO estimated figures, which is more than 2 times than these figures.
The fatality rate of the country is on higher side as 9 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitant. Based on the last five year road fatalities of Kathmandu valley, motorcyclist share around one half and pedestrian share one third of total fatalities. Despite of our commitment of reducing road fatalities by 50%
As Road Safety is an interdisciplinary issue, it requires multi-sector involvements and coordination, which is the missing link till date in context of Nepal. Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP), Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport (MoPIT) and Ministry of Home are currently most active governmental agency of our country involved till date in Road Safety, with Ministry of Education.
Apart from governmental agencies, various transportation various civil societies have been working on this sector; viz: Nasa Foundation, Road Safety Society Nepal (RSSN), Safe and Sustainable Travel Nepal (SSTN), Swatantrata Abhiyan Nepal (SAN), Nepal Injury Research Center (NIRC), Road Safety Forum, RMR Foundation, Laxmi Foundation, and many other.
Main issue is the coordination, either it be among governmental organization or among private organization. We can clearly see the lack of coordination between Department of Road (DoR), Department of Transport Management (DoTM) and Traffic Police during traffic management and assessment of road safety. Coordination is missing not only among government organization but also among private organizations. Though the various organization from civil societies are trying something from their behalf, the outcome is not significant. The outcome will be even more if the effort would have been unified avoiding the duplication of road safety activities.
With the Global Road Safety Action Plan 2011-20, we develop our National Road Safety Action Plan 2013-2020 after two year. But even with only two year remaining for the completion of decade of action, we achieve nothing, even the stakeholder are unaware of their role and despite of reducing road crashes fatalities it’s on the opposite site. So one of the Speak Up issue will be the development of Autonomous Road Safety Council, who will then take over the leadership role and assign the responsibility to each stakeholder in most effective and efficient manner.
But in absence of such organization, each one of us need to step up as a leader. Representative of Civil society need to raise issue on road safety and advocate for better rule and policy; universities need to carry out research on the field and built proper database for discussion, parliament member need to sensitize this issue and make it the national agenda.
We always rely other either governmental organization or civil societies for change and never start from self. We want traffic police to enforce seat belt, helmet use or any road and traffic rule, but we can even step up in this regards. It’s our responsibility to step up and raise the issue. After that the pressurized group need to form for the implementation of law and policies. Leadership is grooming these days among us; Nepal Cycle Society demanding for Cycle lane; NASA Foundation demanding for International Driving Permit (IDP). Along with this many organization need to step up and lead the road safety along different perspective.
Event for the sake of event is not worthy, thus the program and activities related to road safety should not be confined in these international event, it should be planned for the entire year. We can improve the safety status by better education, engineering, enforcement and most importantly via better coordination removing the current trend of Blame Game among organization.
Let’s start from ourselves changing our behavior on road. Let’s Join Hand together for this social cause.
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(Tiwari, Traffic and Transportation Engineer, is Chairman of Safe and Sustainable Travel Nepal (SSTN)
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