Road engineers not to compromise with design

Stating that road design should not be an ad-hoc generalisation to justify adopting some inferior and unsafe features to save money, surface transport and highways minister C P Joshi said finding the appropriate balance should be foremost priority that could be assisted by objective research. Delivering inaugural address at the workshop on ‘consideration on road safety in design of road projects’, the minister asked the Road engineers not to compromise with the appropriate and safe road design. “All Road designs should be a compromise between the ideal and the reasonable outcome in terms of cost, safety, service life, environmental and social issues”, he said.
 
Expressing his concern on Road accidents, the Minister said that over one lakh persons get killed and more than 4.5 lakh persons are injured in our country every year in Road accidents and the vulnerable Road users constitute 60-80 per cent of total traffic fatalities in India. The number of fatalities in the last two decades has seen a huge growth due to exponential growth of vehicles on our roads.
 
The workshop was jointly organized by National Highways Authority of India and Indian Road Congress. Themes include: Approach to Road Safety during design; Road safety audit-accident mitigation measures; Safeties in work zones on road projects; and Innovative road safety devices. The technical sessions of the workshop aimed at providing a common platform to the highway Engineers, planners, concessionaries, consultants, contractors, research organizations, manufacturers, etc. to exchange their knowledge in consideration of road safety in design of road projects.

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