Investment, Institutions & Interventions Tony Bliss Honorary Senior Fellow, Urban Transport, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning Director, Road Safety Management Limited National Workshop on Road Safety Visakhapatnum, Andhra Pradesh, India August 19 – 20, 2016 National Workshop on Road Safety Visakhapatnum, Andhra Pradesh, India August 19 – 20, 2016

Investment Road safety is produced, like other goods and services, and the production process is driven by targeted investment. Experience in good practice countries demonstrates that high levels of sustained investment are critical to success. The sheer scale of investment required in low and middle-income countries to catch up and match the performance of high-income countries is considerably greater than generally appreciated. For example, it has been crudely estimated that the achievement of a 50% reduction in road crash fatalities in India over the Decade of Action (2010 – 2020) would require additional annual investments, over and above projected business-as-usual funding, of between $0.7 – $15 billion in 2010 (0.02 – 0.40 % of GDP), growing to between $13 – $25 billion in 2020 (0.18 – 0.35 % of GDP); depending on the mix and effectiveness of interventions taken.

Institutions Institutions are responsible for target setting, coordination, legislation, funding and resource allocation, promotion, monitoring and evaluation, and research and development and knowledge transfer activities, plus the delivery of related interventions. Experience in good practice countries highlights that empowered and accountable institutions are critical to success. Poor and deteriorating road safety performance in many low and middle- income countries more than anything else reflects their lack of effective institutions. It is instructive to quickly review past institutional arrangements in Great Britain, the Netherlands, and the State of Victoria, Australian that are relevant to India at this stage of its road safety strategy development and institutional capacity building.

Institutions: Great Britain (2005)

Institutions: The Netherlands (2004 – 2005)

Institutions: State of Victoria, Australia (2005)

Interventions Interventions can be viewed as standards and rules governing the safe planning, design, operation and use of the road network; the conditions of safe entry and exit of vehicles and road users to the road network; and the safe recovery and rehabilitation of crash victims from the road network; plus related compliance regimes. The evolution of the Safe System approach puts the performance focus firmly on the measures that can be taken to protect fallible and vulnerable road users. A long history of ‘victim blaming’ in high- income countries has been discredited and replaced with a zero- harm philosophy that seeks to eliminate road deaths and injuries. In this context high priority interventions in India must address infrastructure and vehicle safety and related speed management.

Key messages This brings us full circle back to the scale of additional investment that will be required in India to rapidly bring road safety performance more into line with the results achieved in high-income countries over the last four or five decades. Building sustainable institutional capacity to manage the necessary investment and delivery of related interventions is a top priority. Without well functioning institutions little progress can be expected. Consideration of investment, institutions and interventions must also be undertaken in the context of new forms of mobility arising from the rapid convergence of ICT and transport technologies and high priority global goals concerning the environment, energy security, urbanization and public health. Policy integration will be vital.

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