Use of technology for greater road safety discussed at IIT Madras
Kolkata, Nov 4
The use of Geospatial data and Artificial Intelligence to enable advanced road safety interventions came up for discussion during a fireside chat with Justice Abhay Manohar Sapre, former judge, Supreme Court of India, and chairman, Supreme Court Committee on Road Safety, and Sanjay Bandopadhyay, member, SCCoRS at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras on Wednesday.
The event brought together students, practitioners and innovators, who explored India's road safety challenges and the role of technology in addressing them.
The key causes of road crashes, including overspeeding, drunk driving, wrong-side driving, jumping red lights, mobile phone use while driving, unsafe overtaking and driver fatigue and stress, were highlighted by Justice Sapre.
He also spoke on the importance of applying first-principles thinking to develop effective solutions.
The Road Safety Innovation Hub, developed by the Government of Tamil Nadu with RBG Labs, was also introduced during the session as a platform for students, researchers and entrepreneurs to share, test and advance their ideas.
The Road Safety Innovation Hub often works alongside academic partners like the Centre of Excellence for Road Safety at IIT Madras to design, test, and deploy new technologies and data-driven solutions for safer roads.
Its core focus area is creating data-backed safety interventions, smart mobility tools, low-cost engineering fixes, and emerging safety technologies to reduce traffic crashes and fatalities.
It aligns with similar state and national deep-tech frameworks in India - such as Odisha's design-thinking capacity programs and IIT Delhi's Bharat Safety initiative - to scale tech-driven road safety.
According to data shared in Parliament by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH), 1,77,177 people were killed in road accidents in India in 2024.
This was a 2.3% increase from the previous year. This effectively means that nearly 485 people die due to road accidents in India every day, and the toll is about 20 per hour.
Data reveals that the number of deaths has gone up over the years. While 1,68,491 people were killed in 2022, the toll was 1,72,890 in 2023.
About 46.2% of those killed are two-wheeler riders, while 20.6% are pedestrians. About 66.1% of those killed are in the productive age group of 18 to 45 years, while those aged between 18 and 60 make up 83.3%.
— IANS
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