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NEW DELHI: Despite having the first right on roads, pedestrians remain the most vulnerable user and data show that nearly 1.5 lakh of them died in road crashes in the country in from 2019-2023 out of the little over 7.9 lakh of all road fatalities during these years.While Supreme Court this week said that “rights of pedestrians to use footpaths are guaranteed under Article 21 of Constitution”, audits carried out in 24 states following a direction of an SC panel found that roads having footpaths across most states and UTs range between 19% and 73%, with Maharashtra having the maximum.
Just 3% of J&K roads have pavements
Details of the audit findings were released recently by the Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Centre of Injury and IIT-Delhi in its report ‘India Status Report on Road Safety’. The availability of footpaths and whether these comply with the norms of width and height specified by the Indian Road Congress (IRC) were arrived at based on surveys across four cities in each state.As per the findings, in Jammu & Kashmir, barely 3% of the roads surveyed had footpath, and in the case of Puducherry, it was only 5%. In Bihar and Haryana, 19%-20% of roads had footpath. In most cases, footpath were not as per IRC norms.The apex court, in its order this week, observed, “It is necessary to have proper footpaths for citizens. They should be such that they should be accessible for persons with disabilities and removal of encroachments is mandatory. This court has recognised that the right of pedestrians to use footpaths is guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution.”Amar Srivastava, who heads India Road Safety Campaign, a youth-led road safety movement, said that building proper footpaths and keeping them free for pedestrians is the most low cost intervention to prevent road crashes. “So, this should be the priority of every city administration and local govts,” he added.According to World Health Organisation, globally pedestrians make up 21% of road fatalities and in India, nearly one-fifth of people killed in road crashes in 2023 were walkers. WHO, last week, released a toolkit for promoting ‘walking and cycling’ for govt bodies as part of the ongoing UN Road Safety Week with the theme ‘make walking and cycling safe’, laying out why promoting walking and cycling should be the priority of govts for sustainable development and good health of people.
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