The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors has approved of $250 million financing support to the Government of India’s Programme for Strengthening Road Safety, a move which authorities say will help reduce road fatalities and also strengthen emergency medical and rehabilitation services for post-crash care. The $250 million variable spread loan from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) has a maturity of 18 years including a grace period of 5.5 years.

The road safety programme, financed by the World Bank, will be implemented in the states of Andhra Pradesh (AP), Gujarat, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh (UP), and West Bengal, the states which have reported a large number of road accidents. Incidentally, Bihar, which reported a total of 8,639 road accidents in 2020, has been kept out of the road safety programme.

Tamil Nadu with a total of 45,484 road accidents reported in 2020 remains on top in road accidents, followed by Madhya Pradesh (42,396 accidents), Karnataka (34,178), UP (28,653) and Kerala (27,799) whereas Lakshadweep with only one road accident figures on the last position, according to an official report.

With only 1 percent of the world’s vehicles, India accounts for almost 10 percent of all road accident-related deaths. Poor households bear a higher proportion of the socio-economic burden of road crashes due to loss of income (over 70 percent of crash victims in poor households), high medical expenses and limited access to social safety nets.

According to a World Bank study, road crashes are estimated to cost the Indian economy between 5 to 7 percent of GDP a year. Official data show that each year road accidents in India kill about 1,50,000 people and injure another 4.50 lakh.  More than half of the victims are pedestrians, cyclists, or motorcyclists and almost 84 percent of all fatalities are among road users between the working ages of 18-60 years.

“The World Bank’s India Road Safety Project will support the Government of India’s efforts to reduce the incidence of road crashes by creating efficient institutional mechanisms for safer roads, vehicles, and enforcement in the country and strengthening efforts to provide better on-the-spot care to victims of road crashes,” said Hideki Mori, Acting Country Director, World Bank India in a press statement issued on Monday. “This will help in reducing the impact road crashes have, especially on the poor, and the economy and human capital,” he added.

Road safety interventions face a unique challenge in India as the management is spread across different tiers of government. The project will focus on strengthening and streamlining the management capability of the lead agencies for road safety in these states. To reduce incidents of road crashes, the project will establish a national harmonised crash database system, the analysis of which will be used to construct better and safer roads.

Women face the indirect brunt of road accidents. Recognising this challenge, the project has a special focus on gender and will promote women’s representation in management roles in the road safety sector. The project will also provide employment opportunities for women especially, in post-crash care command and control centers.

To better manage post-crash events, the project will help strengthen pre-hospital emergency care services for road crash victims. This will include setting up a single accident reporting number, increasing the network of basic and advanced life support ambulances and training first responder caregivers to road crash victims on the spot. The project will also provide incentives to states to leverage private funding through Public-Private Partnership (PPP) concessions and pilot initiatives.

“The India State Road Safety Project will help the Centre and the state governments better design, coordinate and execute road safety programs in a results-oriented approach,” said Dipan Bose, Arnab Bandyopadhyay and Suresh Kunhi Mohammed, task team leaders for the project. They added the program would drive key reforms in institutional mechanisms, road safety engineering, enforcement, and emergency care using a results-based approach.