The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has moved a Cabinet note proposing a Road Safety Traffic Management Authority, which would have a dedicated funding mechanism to implement the road safety related steps in the country.

The funding will be through one per cent of the Central Road Fund that accrues to the Ministry, Rajiv Lochan, Director in the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways told BusinessLine at Volvo Nobel Memorial seminar organised here.

This was shared by Rajiv Lochan, while responding to a BusinessLine query, in India accounts for the largest number of road accident deaths globally. Lochan also shared that they are looking at improving the call centre – 1033 – to make available faster relief to accident victims on the national highways.

R Chandrasekaran, Secretary General, General Insurance Council, said that data from accident or driver records are not easily available that would enable insurance companies to come up with specific premium pricing policies that are specific to an area, a vehicle or a driver.

Given 1.5 lakh deaths and 4.5 lakh injuries due to road accidents, insurance companies will need ₹25,000-crore premium to just break-even; they get only ₹17,000 crore.

Several experts pointed out the need to have accident site data collection in a more scientific basis. The Road Ministry has shared with various police stations a format that would help capture data in a standardised format, shared Lochan.

The need to have scientific investigation of crash sites so that appropriate road design changes can be made was another point on which the experts agreed.

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