Chennai: Researchers of Indian Institute of Technology Madras are developing data-driven strategies to enhance road Safety in Tamilnadu. Towards this, a one-day workshop on developing an action plan was organised recently by Center of Excellence for Human Factors and Safety Science at RBG Labs, IIT Madras, in coordination with the National Health Mission.
Various stakeholders involved in road safety include the Police, Health, Transport, Road owning agencies, Education, Rural Development, and Local Self Government, among others, participated in the workshop held at IIT Madras Research Park.
The outcomes of this workshop will be used to help a focused action plan and be used as a policy advisory to help reduce road accidents and fatalities in Tamilnadu.
Conveying his message for the workshop, Health Minister Ma Subramanian, said, ‘This workshop is the first of many such design-thinking based strategizing workshops for road safety. This coordinated knowledge sharing session among all the road safety stakeholders in Tamilnadu will be a pathway to continuously evolve successful road safety policies in the State.’
The key outcomes envisaged from this program include: Clear long term policies and strategies for moving towards an āaccident-free Tamilnaduā, Short term strategies to improve road safety and minimise road traffic accidents during the next three months, Action Points and Key Performance Indicators for each of the Stakeholder Departments, including Health, Police,
Road owning agencies, Transport, Education and Local Bodies, Modalities for sharing and utilizing the data available with Stakeholder departments for collective action in ensuring road safety.
For example, Grid Analysis data available with Health Departments shall be used for enforcement, preventive action awareness creation, among others, by the stakeholder departments concerned.
Elaborating on this engagement, Prof. Venkatesh Balasubramanian, Faculty In-Charge, Center of Excellence for Human Factors and Safety Science at RBG Labs, IIT Madras, who coordinated the workshop, said, ‘Avoiding accidents and fatalities in accidents is an essential requirement to be a developed nation. Roads are shared assets and the safety on them is a collective responsibility of all the stakeholders.’
Further, Prof. Venkatesh Balasubramanian said, ‘We have been advocating a data-driven systems approach to road safety through our Transportation Safety Framework (TSF) to have a holistic improvement. While TN has been performing well on reducing the fatalities from road accidents, in 2021, after the lockdown there has been a steady increase in fatality. Therefore, it is
quintessential to develop a good strategy based on data to address this on a priority basis. It is, therefore, necessary to have a design thinking approach to solve the problem by not just identifying the issues but implementing changes that are sustainable in the local conditions.’
In 2020, Tamilnadu became the first State in India and globally, the only administered territory to have achieved a Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) target of reducing deaths due to road accidents by 50 per cent. However, there has been a steady increase in the number of road fatalities in 2021.
National campaign for women drivers
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The campaign titled ‘Moving Boundaries’ is a joint initiative of Shell Foundation, a UK based charity and the United Kingdom government in association with Moving Women Social Initiatives Foundation (MOWO).
Jai Bharathi, founder of MOWO is touring India on her motorbike from for a period of over 40 days and covering over 20 cities to create awareness and encourage women to learn driving to increase their job opportunities. Bharathi reached Chennai recently on the current leg of her tour.