The Tamil Nadu government is set to collaborate with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras Centre of Excellence for Road Safety to work towards road safety.

The premier institute will collaborate with a TN Govt Special Task Force to implement Scientific Enforcement approach to Road Safety.

This initiative uses a ‘design thinking’ approach developed by Centre of Excellence for Road Safety, RBG Labs, IIT Madras and will be implemented by stakeholder Departments of Tamil Nadu involved in road safety, especially the Tamil Nadu Police according to IIT Madras.

Dr 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 family due to young students and breadwinners losing their lives. The adoption of a scientific approach to road safety is a must.”

Among key outcomes, the collaboration aims to conduct forensic accident audits at identified crash spots and develop a comprehensive and scientific crash investigation, compile a crash investigation report covering all aspects of safety and recommendations for the hotspots for prevention of accidents along with photographs, design framework for conducting empirical ground studies, identification of gaps in data collection and provide a structured methodology for data collection and analysis, provide recommendations on data-driven process improvements in enforcement strategies, perform scientific evaluation of the impact of interventions implemented and draft a standard operating procedure (SOP) for effective traffic enforcement.

Prof V Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, said, “Leveraging the technical and robust field level experience of Tamil Nadu Police along with 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.”

Vinit Wankhede, Additional Director General of Police and Chairperson, Special Task Force on Road Safety (STF–RS), Tamil Nadu, said, “Police attend to multifarious works. In cities, we have dedicated traffic wings but traffic regulation itself takes up most of the time. In districts, very limited staff is available exclusively for enforcement and hence regular staff which must look after law and order and crimes must perform this function too. Limited resources mean there is a limit to the number of cases the police can book in a day or month. The key objective of this collaboration is to identify short-term and long-term solutions by district collectors and other road owning agencies and undertake the preparatory tasks to establish Tamil Nadu Road Safety Authority (TNRSA).”