Centre of Excellence for Road Safety (CoERS)

About CoERS

India faces one of the highest burdens of road crash fatalities globally, with thousands of lives lost every year due to preventable causes. To address this, the Centre of Excellence for Road Safety (CoERS) was established at IIT Madras as a national think tank and research hub. The Centre’s mission is to support the Government of India in reducing road crash deaths by 50% by 2030 and working towards zero fatalities by 2040 through a structured, data-driven approach.

Working towards these goals, it is important to establish a robust system enabling quality data collection, incremental improvements in the state, and implementation of data-driven policies across all domains: engineering (vehicle and road), enforcement, emergency care, education, and human factors.

1. Why CoERS Exists

CoERS functions as a state-of-the-art interdisciplinary lab, integrating expertise from engineering design, behavioural sciences, enforcement technologies, and emergency care systems. The Centre focuses on:

  • Human factors and vehicle safety: driver health, ergonomics, crashworthiness.
  • Road infrastructure and traffic systems: safer design, high-risk corridor analysis.
  • Crash data analytics and enforcement: AI- and IoT-enabled monitoring for decision support.
  • Emergency and trauma care: strengthening response time and post-crash survival.
  • Policy advisory and advocacy: providing evidence-backed recommendations for MoRTH, state governments, and industry.

2. How CoERS Creates Impact

By combining scientific research with field implementation, CoERS provides evidence-based tools, decision-support systems, and policy inputs to stakeholders. It enables state and district governments to design targeted interventions, builds capacity across institutions, and fosters collaboration between academia, industry, and government. Ultimately, CoERS works towards transforming road safety in India from a reactive process into a systematic, preventive, and people-first ecosystem, ensuring safer roads for all citizens.

CoERS Research Lab