Workshop on Standardising and Strengthening Road Safety Curriculum

Road safety is an issue of universal concern, which affects everyone irrespective of their age. Large number of Road crashes are happening because of Traffic Rules Violations, which shows that the person behind the wheels is making the errors resulting into crashes. Hence, the human beings are to be trained not only to drive but also to become a responsible road user. Over speeding has been the leading cause of road crashes causing 72.5 percent of the accidents followed by driving at roadside at 5.5 percent in 2020.

From when a child is born, roads play a crucial role, hence road safety education becomes important at the initial stage. It is important to prioritise road safety education for personal development and to meet the statutory requirements. In 2020, most of the people who died on the Indian roads were between the age group of 18-45 which means that the most productive age group is dying in the road crashes.

In India, 3,66,138 accidents took place in 2020 in which 1,31,714 people had to lose their life as per MoRTH accident report 2020. We can see the increasing trend in accident severity every year. In India, persons killed per 100 accidents was 29 in 2015 which has shown an increasing trend and now has reached up to 36 in 2020. This shows that more serious accidents are happening on the Indian roads with each passing year. It is needed to educate everyone that road safety should not be taken lightly, as it is a matter of life and death.

“Man behind the wheel plays an important role in most of the crashes. In most of the cases, crashes occurs either due to carelessness or due to lack of road safety awareness of the road user. Hence, road safety education is as essential as any other basic skills of survival.” – Ministry of Road Transport and Highways.

Road Safety Education is one of the E’s of Road Safety which intersects all the other E’s viz. Engineering, Enforcement and Emergency care. Road safety education is viewed as an efficient way of avoiding road crashes among young road users ranging from pedestrians, bicyclists, to adolescent novice drivers. Because a student learns the most in the educational institution, say it school, college, or university, it is important to make road safety part of curriculum.

“Road safety knowledge and awareness will be created amongst the population through education, training and publicity campaigns. Road safety education will also focus on school children and college going students, while road safety publicity campaigns will be used to propagate good road safety practices among the community. The Government will encourage all professionals associated with road design, road construction, road network management, traffic management and law enforcement to attain adequate knowledge of road safety issues.” – National Road Safety Policy.

To inculcate road safety at the school level, it is important to design a curriculum with age wise module. The app-based and story-based teaching techniques can be introduced in the curriculum irrespective of the board.  A virtual workshop was conducted on December 16, 2022 to take the road safety education forward with the objective to Develop the Pedagogy, Implementation of the curriculum at the school level and auditing and evaluation of the same.  The stakeholders of the workshop are Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, Ministry of Education, Education Departments of States, Education Boards and Schools.