Centre government to set up new body on road safety

Coiambatore, Apr 21 (UNI) Union Minister for Shipping Road Transport and Highway T R Balu today said the government has decided to set up a dedicated body 'Road Safety and Trafic Managments' through a Parliament Act where all the departments concerned would be brought under one roof on the basis of S Sundar Committee Report.

Inaugurating the Tenth National Road Safety Council meeting here, he said departments like police, transport, data collection, road engineering and auto mobile engineering will be brought under one roof and guidelines formulated to create a 'State Road Safety Board'.

He said 94,968 lives were lost in road accidents in 2005 and every six minutes one person died in road accidents in the country, Planning Commission and World Bank have put the social cost out of accidents between two to three percentage of the GDP every year.

He said the government has proposed an investmnt of Rs 2,27,258 crore for the development of the National Highways during 2005-12 in a phased manner.

The Minister said 80 percent of the accidents were caused due to the fault of drivers and the government has set up 17 driving institutions for improving the driving skills. He appealed to the state governments to introduce road safety education at school level immediately.

He said one third of state governments were yet to provide land for new road construction projects in National Highways.

UNI