TN, IIT-M to implement scientific approach to road safety

CHENNAI: The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) will collaborate with the Tamil Nadu government to implement a scientific enforcement approach to road safety.

An MoU for this collaboration was signed recently between the Special Task Force, Road Safety, the State government and the Centre of Excellence for Road Safety CoERS, IIT Madras.

Marking the beginning of this partnership, C Sylendra Babu, IPS, Director General of Police, Tamil Nadu, said, “It is important to understand the socio-economic burden of road accidents on society and families due to young students and breadwinners losing their lives. The adoption of a scientific approach to road safety is a must.”

The key outcomes targeted from this collaboration include conducting forensic accident audits at identified crash spots and developing a comprehensive and scientific crash investigation taking into factor the human, vehicle, and road environment, and submitting a detailed crash investigation report covering all aspects of safety and recommendations for the hotspots for prevention of accidents along with photographs.

In addition, designing a framework for conducting empirical ground studies, identification of gaps in data collection and analysis will be done. The collaboration study would provide recommendations on data-driven process improvements in enforcement strategies.

Performing scientific evaluation of the impact of interventions implemented and creating a comprehensive standard operating procedure (SOP) for effective traffic enforcement.

V Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, said, leveraging the technical and robust field level experience of Tamil Nadu Police along with the large amount of data available with them we have no doubt that a very robust and comprehensive road safety framework will be developed through this interaction at the shortest possible time.