Akash Shah was sitting atop his motorbike waiting to make a u-turn on the busy streets of his hometown in Pune, India when a bus veered from its designated lane and nearly crashed into him.
“I felt very lucky,” he said in a phone interview. “That’s why I felt I should do something and started taking on various projects to educate people about safer roads.”
Shah was indeed lucky.
Reckless and drunk driving, overcrowded roads, a lack of safety infrastructure, and low use of seatbelts and helmets are among the issues that have made India the most dangerous roads in the world. One person is killed on India’s roads every five minutes, according to the World Health Organization. Although it accounts for only one percent of the world’s cars, 15 percent of the world’s traffic fatalities occur in India.
The near miss at such a young age — Shah was only 16 at the time — made him dedicate much of his time to preventing road accidents. In the three years since, he has taken his message of road safety to 50 high schools in Pune.
Shah tells his peers about the importance of helmets and seatbelts, and encourages them to advocate for the enforcement of traffic laws and the development of crosswalks.
“My message to young people is that they need to start following the rules and take steps themselves to eradicate the problem,” he said.
Shah was recently named one of 16 grantees charged with developing innovative solutions to India’s worsening traffic situation. They will use funds from the Youth Services America (YSA), a Washington, DC-based organization that aims to empower young people, and the safety organization UL, to try to make India’s precarious traffic situation less risky to motorists and pedestrians. The two organizations have also teamed up to undertake the largest ever audit of the country’s roads.
The issue is of particular importance to India’s young people.
“Right now, about 50 percent of India’s population is under 25,” Rebecca Levy of YSA said. “We’re looking to them to come up with creative and innovative solutions because road safety is such a huge problem in India right now.”
The issue of road safety also disproportionately affects India’s young people who are among the most susceptible to traffic fatalities. Last year, more than 30 percent of those killed on the road were between the ages of 15 and 29.
India’s now defunct Planning Commission estimated that traffic accidents could cost the country about three percent of its GDP — that’s a staggering $60 billion a year.
The impact on individual lives is harder to measure.
The continued wear to roads and damage to safety infrastructure like guardrails has only made the risks posed to those on India’s roads more worrisome.
“We have roads that punish a person in a manner that he remembers it all through his life, if he is fortunate enough to be alive,” Hamran Singh Sidhu, the president of the Delhi-based advocacy organization ArriveSAFE, told ThinkProgress in an email.
“I am one of those,” he continued. “Our car rolled down a gorge nearly 19 years back and since then I am wheelchair bound due to a neck level spinal injury that changed the course of my life forever.”
Sidhu decided to become an advocate for the cause, Its one that he has drawn increased awareness, but continues to claim all to many lives.
While responding to ThinkProgress’ email, he said he received a news alert on yet another devastating road accident. As many as 20 people were killed and 15 injured when a bus rolled down a river bank in the Indian province of Himachal Pradesh.
Sidhu noted that many have resigned themselves to seeing traffic fatalities as the “will of God” — a rationalization that he believes keeps people form working to address the issue, even as he said corrupt officials hand out drivers licenses in exchange for money and police neglect to issue tickets for offenses ranging from drunk driving to broken side mirrors.
“This reply doesn’t come only from the uneducated or underprivileged but even from those who are educated enough to understand that it is a result of a cause and its effect,” Sidhi said. “Some of them become decision makers but the logic remains the same. Once our logic is wrong, we cannot get the desired result.”
And India’s dangerous roads make no distinction along the lines of class. Although it’s a country with steep levels of income inequality, road accidents are a fate anyone can suffer.
Gopinath Munde, India’s minister of rural development, was killed when a speeding taxi crashed into his car last June.
Just nine days into his term when the accident occurred, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised sweeping reforms including steeper penalties for disobeying traffic laws and the creation of a national transportation regulation authority. Although his government developed the Road Safety and Transport Bill to replace a 1988 traffic law, it’s since only been stalled in the legislature and weakened by lobbyists.
Transit unions are among the bill’s most virulent opponents. In April, they disrupted traffic by striking for 24 hours in 10 different states. Car manufacturers, who would face steep fines for faulty designs, also have cause to rail against the bill.
As it wallows, Indians continue to die. More than 4,000 more were killed last year than the year before. If the decade-long trend continues, this year could be the worst yet.