India In Talks With South Korea To Develop Integrated Highway Monitoring And Information System

India is looking to explore a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with South Korea to develop a Highway Information System (HIS) in the country. To be developed on the lines of the Express Highways Information Corporation (EHIC) of South Korea, the system would include monitoring of national highways along with a centralised control room.

Talking at the twenty-ninth National Road Safety Week at New Delhi, Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) Nitin Gadkari spoke about the ministry’s plans to bring down the number of fatal accidents on Indian highways by half. Around 150,000 accidental deaths occur on Indian roads in a year.

Gadkari said that his ministry was working on the 4E principles – Education, Enforcement, Engineering and Emergency – to improve safety standards on Indian highways.

Along with this, the ministry has set up a Driving Training Centre (DTC) to provide training to those driving commercial vehicles and thereby improve road safety. A total of 789 black spots – areas that witness high volumes of accidents – have been identified of which action has been taken on 139 such black spots. Detailed Road Safety Audits have been undertaken on 610 km of National Highways over the last two years to assess their safety levels and focus on improving them.