Contact

Indian Road Safety Campaign

Email

http://www.road.safety.co.in/isafe19/ 13 th June 2020

IRSC Rolling Out Awareness amid Lockdown

Webinar 9: Achieving Global Goals 2030

Dr. Etienne Krug, Director of WHO (NVI) and Chair, United Nations Road Safety Collaboration was
invited to the webinar on 13th June 2020 from 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm (IST), to discuss about Mission 50 by
2030. The session was attended by Road Safety Youth Ambassadors from 23 different countries and
around 180 participants from various sectors all around the world.

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

Dr. Krug highlighted the following points

● Apply knowledge of what worked in Sweden, New Zealand and Australia to reduce the number
of road accidents even though numbers of vehicles are increasing.
● Top level political decision making and intervention is necessary for policies to work as the
numbers of vehicles keeps on increasing and so does the number of road fatalities.
● Role of technology is very important component as it is involved at both micro and macro level
policy designing. Along with technological advances, we should also work at the ground level.
● Vehicles should de designed keeping in mind protection of vulnerable groups (children playing
along roadside, people walking/cycling)
● For effective emergency relief system, given India’s heterogeneous Traffic Grid, there should be
bystander training. Further, ISD (Integrated Systems Design) should also focus on that.
● Role of the Young People is extremely important as they are one of the most vulnerable groups,
and they have energy to bring about desired changes.

Dr. Krug concluded with “I hope there will be strong attention to the importance of tackling safety on road.
That we will continue to improve and enforce the laws, with a particular thought for vulnerable road users
(walking, cycling etc.). And public transport needs to get more space, not only physically but in the thoughts and
legislative efforts of the government. I also 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.”
In response to the changing landscape during COVID-19 pandemic, each week IRSC invites a variety of
road safety experts for a live discussion and Q&A offering new insights into different aspects of road
safety. The webinar series has completed 9 sessions with prominent speakers like Dr. Eva
Molnar(Former Director of UNECE), Rashmi Urdhwareshe  (Director, ARAI), Abhay Damle(Former
Joint Secretary, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, India), Piyush Tiwari(CEO &Founder,
SaveLIFE Foundation)  and  IV Rao (Former Sr MEO Engg and Director MACE) and attended by 1200 +
participants from different sectors and all 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 organization working across 50+ cities with 40,000+ volunteers
while leading initiatives of Central and State Governments.