The link between Road safety and Environmental sustainability

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.

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.