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Are India’s new all-weather rural roads safe for school children?

India’s all-weather rural road programme has brought important benefits to village people, but the roads are more dangerous than town roads. The risk of accidents needs to be assessed for each stretch of road in order to make changes. Rural communities must also be trained to understand the new dangers.

In 2000, the Government of India initiated a programme, known as ‘Prime Minister Gram Sadak Yojana’ (PMGSY) to construct all-weather rural roads. The roads are designed to connect all villages with over 500 people by the end of 2007. This study, by Rajasthan and Birla Institute of Technology and Science in India, looks at the effect of new roads on villages in Rajasthan.

Roads have clearly improved the social, physical and financial well-being of people in connected villages. However, the increased accessibility has meant that there are more fast and heavy motorised vehicles around the villages.

There are more fatal accidents on roads passing through rural areas than on urban roads. The number of accidents on rural roads is also increasing. The quality of recently constructed roads is usually good and motorists travel fast on them. Furthermore, many different kinds of people use the roads, and there is less law enforcement. Villagers are not used to large vehicles and need time to understand the new risks and change the way they use the roads.

The problem of safety is particularly significant among school children, who travel long distances to reach schools. Most of them were used to village roads with little motorised traffic before the construction of PMGSY roads. Those that travel by bicycle or on foot are endangered by poor road design (such as a lack of adequate road shoulders and narrow single lane roads) and by speeding motorised vehicles.

Data collected among school children in five villages in the Alwar District of Rajasthan revealed that they felt more insecure after the new roads were built. This was due to:

more fast moving motorised vehicles on the road
speeding and disobedience of traffic rules by most drivers
a lack of road markings and sign posts
a lack of education on road safety.

The study argues that by using a simple technique, called the Accident Potential Index (API), it is possible to determine the likelihood of children being involved in an accident on the PMGSY roads. If each road could be assessed in terms of five factors, decision-makers would be able to identify the particular aspect of each stretch of road that needed immediate attention. These five factors (in order of importance) are:

the physical quality of the road
the width and quality of the hard shoulder; this is particularly important for single lane roads (like PMGSY roads)
the type and number of vehicles on the road
the type of transport that children use: most go on foot or by bicycle; buses are only used for primary schools
how far children travel.

It is also important to include a safety education component in large-scale rural road programmes to help rural communities understand changes in the traffic environment.

Source(s):
‘Impact of PMGSY Roads on the Traffic Safety of School-Going Children in Rural Areas’, International Forum for Rural Transport and Development Case Study, by Ashoke K. Sarkar, 2007 Full document.
‘Time to Broaden the Transport Safety Debate. Study on various elements of rural transport safety. A synthesis of pilot case studies from Sri Lanka, India, Madagascar, Cameroon and Peru.’ IFRTD: London, by Didier Young, Granie R Jayalath, Ashoke Sarkar, Maria Gutierrez and Vivien Meli, 2007 Full document.

id21 Research Highlight: 9 November 2007

Further Information:
Ashoke K. Sarkar
The Regional Forum Group (RFG)
of the International Forum for Rural Transport and Development, Rajasthan
Birla Institute of Technology and Science
Vidhya Vihar Campus
Pilani
Rajasthan
333031
INDIA

Tel: +91 1596 245073 ext. 235
Fax: +91 1596 244183
Contact the contributor: aksarkar@bits-pilani.ac.in; asarkabits@gmail.com

Birla Institute of Technology and Science, India

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