The link between Road safety and Environmental sustainability

Why in News?

Recently, It has been observed that Roads and the environment are inseparable spaces.

About Linkage

In addition to ensuring an easier, more comfortable, and more secure commute, safer roads also have a positive impact on the environment.
In 2021, India reported 4,03,116 crashes, each of which adversely impacted the environment in various ways and in different degrees.
Most vehicles contain toxic metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium or hexavalent chromium, which are detrimental to the environment.
Fuel and fluid leaks are seen at crash sites.
- Severe road crashes lead to automobile wreckage, which becomes a part of unusable end-of-life vehicles. This gives rise to scrappage.

Existing Issues

India is estimated to have about 22.5 million end-of-life vehicles by 2025.
With the absence of widespread, systematic facilities dedicated to their proper recycling, vehicles after road crashes as well as old end-of-life automobiles are left to rot by the wayside.
Some end up at landfills or at informal recycling facilities where rudimentary hand tools are utilized to unscientifically dismantle them.
- This leads to the leakage of hazardous constituents such as oils, coolants, and glass wool.
Vehicle landfills turn into automobile graveyards leading to wasteful and sub-optimal land usage and water and soil pollution for decades.
Speeding limits: One of the biggest factors for road crashes is speeding.
- Speeding has consistently been responsible for over 60% of all road crash fatalities in India in the last five years.
Missing or inadequate signages are another leading cause of road crashes.
- Their absence results in road users being unaware of a stretch’s unique features in a timely manner, which could lead to crashes.
- It is a common standard practice to use asbestos for creating these signages. asbestos has an adverse impact on the environment.

Global Efforts

Simulation exercises in Europe have demonstrated that cutting motorway speed limits even by 10 km/h can deliver 12% to 18% fuel savings for current technology passenger cars, along with a significant reduction in pollutant emissions, particularly Nitrogen Oxides and particulate matter (PM) output, from diesel vehicles.
A similar study conducted in Amsterdam demonstrated that where the speed limit was lowered from 100 km/h to 80 km/h, PM reduced by up to 15% thereby significantly improving air quality. S

Consequently, several governments globally have reduced speed limits to prevent crashes and lower air pollution.

Various initiatives in India

In India, the Zero-Fatality Corridor solution for road safety by the SaveLIFE Foundation (SLF) takes environmental sustainability seriously and focuses on reducing speeding through advanced engineering and enforcement technologies.
The Foundation’s Zero-Fatality Corridor (ZFC) programme, which was deployed on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway in 2016, helped bring down road crash fatalities by 52%, as of 2020.
Similar interventions were introduced in 2018 on the Old Mumbai-Pune Highway and helped reduce the road crash fatalities on this stretch by 61%, as of 2021.
Initiatives included guarding natural hard structures such as trees using crash barriers to prevent direct collisions, and installing retro-reflective signage on the trees to make them more visible to commuters.
The Government of India is now building green corridors to go over forests and animal paths as opposed to going through them.
- Scaling this will have a profound impact on preserving the environment while ensuring better road connectivity.

Conclusion and Way Ahead

Roads and the environment are inseparable spaces. They are not just our shared resources but also our joint responsibility.
Therefore, safer roads and a sustainable environment can be ensured only through the joint efforts of road-owning agencies, enforcement officials, and the public.

Mains Practice Question

Road safety and environmental sustainability are closely intertwined concepts. Discuss.

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