A FRAME WORK FOR ROAD SAFETY MANAGEMENT (RSM) IN INDIAN STATES (Paper 746)

Annually five hundred thousand road traffic accidents, resulting in hundred and fifty thousand deaths and five hundred thousand injuries are reported in the twenty nine states of India.National and State Governments are seized of the Road Safety problems,but the actions are not getting focussed and are not yielding any tangible results.The strategies adopted by some countries like Newzealand, United Kingdom are worth emulating.Planning,design,operation and regulation of road transport is the subject of the states.As such there is a need to establish a mechanism in each of the states to concertedly tackle the problems of Road Safety.In this paper an attempt is made to conceptualise a framework and a body to fit into this framework for addressing the road safety issues in each of the Indian States. The business of Road Safety must be looked at as a  corporate business and not a casual approach.