Sumana Narayanan, Senior Researcher

Growing up, I thought my city, Madras (that is also Chennai) was just unfortunate to be permanently water-starved. We were dependent on the monsoons to fill up the city’s reservoirs and recharge groundwater.

A WhatsApp forward came the other day. The provenance was unknown and information scanty. It consisted of an image announcing a meeting under the aegis of CRRT (Chennai River Restoration Trust, a government-owned trust) and TNUIFSL (Tamil Nadu Urban Infrastructure Financial Services Ltd, a Public Limited Company).

An oft quoted data, when it comes to road safety in India, is that every hour, 17 people die on the country’s roads. That’s 408 people per day.

Yet most of us Indians drive in a most irresponsible fashion. Perhaps we believe that accidents are things that only happen to other people. Maybe that is why we are so indifferent to the daily news reports of road crashes. Unless several hundred people die in a crash or a particularly gruesome incident, we just shrug it off as a regular day.

How many road crashes take place in India? How many people die or are injured in these crashes? What vehicles were involved? Where did these crashes occur? All this and more information is essential to understanding road safety in the country and to reducing fatalities and injuries. This is self-evident.

Defraying risks has been a goal for humans ever since trading began, perhaps even as far back as the Early Bronze Age. The Code of Hammurabi speaks of traders insuring their goods in ancient Babylon. As trade and human civilizations grew more complex, so did insurance.[1] Today, you can insure almost anything.

When I took the driving test for my LMV licence I was quite nonchalant, having driven a two-wheeler for about two years before and schooled in road rules by the extended family, mostly in the form of asides when other road users behaved badly, “Idiot! Pulling into traffic without looking, without signalling! What is this country coming to?”. At the RTO, for the driving test, I remember being packed into a Maruti 800 with five other 18-year-old women and the Motor Vehicles Inspector. The test was simple.

In the rat race that is the urban lifestyle, we constantly have our foot on the accelerator, trying to get from point A to B in impossibly short times. Small gap in traffic opens in front of us and the instinct is to floor it and close the gap. God forbid someone else reacts quicker, sneaks in, and gets ahead of us! And then there are those situations when the intersection is several 100m ahead and the light turns green. Of course, we must hit 80 kmph and make the green because the world will come to an end if we miss the light.

The other day, at the traffic lights, the “No U Turn” sign, with the red line slashed across the bent arrow, caught my eye. It occurred to me that these signs must be standard across the world. Otherwise, in addition to dealing with each country’s traffic idiosyncrasies, one would also have to learn and unlearn traffic signs. This got me wondering when this standardisation came about and what driving a vehicle must have been like before standards were set and implemented.

Pedestrians are at the bottom of the pecking order of Indian roads. They are a group to be honked at, splashed with dirty rainwater, and given nasty looks for having the temerity to cross the road when there a motorised vehicle within a one-kilometre radius. And of course, pavements for pedestrians are a waste of space. In short, pedestrians should not be allowed to exist.