One road safety audit a must for 5 km or more stretch

At least one road safety audit will be mandatory at the design stage for 5 km or more of a highway stretch for capacity augmentation, the government has said.
This is particularly significant as India accounts for 5 lakh road accidents annually in which 1.5 lakh people die and another 3 lakh are crippled for life. The loss due to this is equivalent to 3 per cent of GDP.
"At least one road safety audit is to be mandatorily carried out preferably at the design stage (DPR stage) for all capacity augmentation projects of 5-km length or more," the Road Transport and Highways Ministry said in a statement.

For capacity augmentation of 50 km or more, there should be one audit at the detailed project report (DPR) stage and one at the pre-opening stage, it said in the guidelines for the audit.
While for expressways, a four-stage audit will be necessary, multiple ones will be done for complex projects.
Last week, Road Transport and Highways Secretary Sanjay Mitra had said the ministry is targeting 3,000 km to be covered under safety audit this year.

"We are also planning to engage state governments to undertake safety audits of state highways and district roads," Mitra said.
The road safety audit involves evaluating highway improvement scheme during design at the end of construction and post construction to identify road safety problems and suggest measures to eliminate or mitigate any concerns.

These audits are undertaken by teams of specialists trained in road safety engineering. Strategic road schemes and the majority of new works are required to have an independent road safety audit to take corrective measures to reduce accidents.
Altogether, 102 vehicles including goods-carrying trucks
entered Tripura yesterday till 7 PM but that did not ease the crisis situation, Saha said.
Apart from this, Chief Secretary Yashpal Singh yesterday visited badly-damaged Lowerpoa at Karmganj area and assured all help to the construction firm working for repair of the highway.
"Tripura government was prepared to supply bricks and stone chips needed for construction in case they faced problems of materials. The works for repair of the damaged highway was progressing at snail's pace," Singh told reporters.

Saha said petroleum products could be brought through Meghalaya's Dawki to Dharmanagar via Sylhat in Bangladesh. He said the state had only 42 days food stocks and in such situation urgent steps needed to be taken by the central government for dispatching food grains.
"Despite state's repeated request to the Centre for urgent interference in the situation, it was just playing the role of onlooker. It is nothing but a conspiracy," Saha added.