All new roads to have Advanced Traffic Management System

To improve road safety in the country and to reduce fatal road accidents on national highways, all the new roads being developed under the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) will have an Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS).

"The Advanced Traffic Management System will include immediate location identification of areas where traffic bottlenecks occur due to accidents or other reasons and provision of information to motorists on that stretch immediately, meteorological systems, speed detection systems, mobile radio communication systems including base and repeater stations, vehicle mounted and hand held units and transmission towers in addition to CCTV units at strategic locations to ensure immediate access to information in emergencies" said R.K. Pandey, Member projects, National Highway Authority of India while inaugurating a webinar on 'Road safety management and action plan' organised by the India chapter of the International Road Federation (IRF).

"At present in most of the NHAi ongoing projects road safety has been incorporated as built in with provision for all kind of flyovers, under passes and overhead passes. Road safety audits are being taken at various stages of construction including at the end of the project. For the existing roads measures have been taken to remove the black spots," said Pandey.

The NHAI has identified about 4500 black spots on the National Highways and 2500 have been rectified. Work on another 1000 stretches is in progress.

"India accounts for more than 10 per cent of global fatal road accidents, the highest in the world. The International Road Federation (IRF) as part of its effort to reduce fatal road accidents in the country has taken up safe road construction projects in seven states including Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka. These roads will be the safest roads in the country with minimum accidents and almost no road fatality," said K. K. Kapila, president emeritus of Geneva based International Road Federation (IRF), working worldwide for better and safer roads.

"India should follow the road safety measures adopted in the state of Tamil Nadu, which has brought down road accident fatalities considerably and created infrastructure which is safe. The time taken for reaching the accident victim or site is the same as world standards" said Shomik Raj Mehndiratta, Practice Manager, Transport - South Asia, The World Bank. - IANS