Where the pedestrian is a third class citizen


Pedestrian accessibility should become the first step in an enlightened urban transport policy.

The rapid growth in automobile use in India is causing a wide range of adverse impacts, even as it provides mobility to millions of people and contributes to employment generation and the economy. While traffic congestion and emissions have attracted much policy attention, perhaps the most serious of these impacts, in health and welfare terms, result from road traffic accidents. Annual road traffic deaths in India have increased from 15,000 in 1971 to over 100,000, nearly a tenth of all such deaths worldwide. Pedestrians and cyclists, the most vulnerable road users, account for the bulk of road fatalities, followed by motorised two-wheeler riders. Thus, the road users and modes that are the least responsible for traffic fatalities and other urban transport impacts are the most adversely affected. While what attention that this serious problem gets focusses on fatalities, there is a substantially larger number of injuries. Tragic as traffic deaths are, injuries are no less so; they occur during the most productive phase of life, and economically devastate families. Traffic-related injuries, already the ninth leading cause of deaths globally, are projected by the World Health Organisation to become the fifth leading cause of death, ahead of all cancers, by 2030