3 out of 5 people feel unsafe on Indian roads: Survey

New Delhi: Three out of five people feel unsafe on Indian roads, says a survey conducted in 12 cities of the country including the four metros.

During the survey, the general public expressed strong support for the Road Transport and Safety Bill, 2014 and expressed hope that roads will become safer.

"81 per cent of all respondents "strongly favor" passing of the proposed road safety Bill and 90 per cent believe that passing the Bill will be an important accomplishment for the Indian Parliament," said the survey report which was released by Former Union Home Secretary GK Pillai in the presence of several families affected by road accidents.

In the past decade, more than 12 lakh people have been killed in road crashes in India. This translates to over 380 deaths a day, equivalent to a jumbo jet crash. Survey findings also revealed that 3 out of 5 respondents feel unsafe while traveling on Indian roads as drivers, pedestrians or passengers, the report said.

The survey was jointly commissioned by Save LIFE Foundation and the Global Road Safety Partnership (a hosted project of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies).

The report further revealed that 91 per cent respondents believe that increased penalties for traffic violations will improve road safety while 97 per cent respondents favour the various statutes for protection of children during commute. 90 per cent respondents favoured mandating helmets for everyone on a two wheeler and 96 per cent favoured reforming RTO's.

Talking about the lack of focus the society and politicians have on road accidents, Pillai pointed out that 2,500 people lost their lives due to terrorism during the last one year.

"But you see the kind of attention terrorism gets. Yesterday, 14 people died, you saw the Union Home Minister going all the way to Chattisgrah and the whole publicity and so on...318 people died yesterday in road accidents in the country. People don't identify it as it gets scattered across the society," Pillai said.

Pillai called upon the society to press the elected representatives to get the bill passed. He also said that just by preventing road accidents, we can increase the GDP by three per cent.

The Poll conducted by international research agency Kadence Research covered 12 cities with a total of 38 per cent respondents belonging to rural touch-points.

The survey was conducted across twelve Indian cities included Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai, Varanasi, Nagpur, Rohtak, Chengalpattu, Burdwan, Palghar and Mandya in which more than 1300 people were interviewed.

The meeting was also attended by families of various victims including Jyoti Gupta who had started an online petition to Prime Minister Modi to introduce a strong Road Safety law.

Jyoti along with the families later reached the Prime Minister's Office and delivered the petition signed by over 2,00,000 people.