After including a mandatory lesson on road safety in CBSE syllabus for Classes VI-X, which will be taught across schools from the coming session, Minister of roads, transport and highways Nitin Gadkari has written to States to include the same in the State Boards. “Cost of road accidents in the country is equivalent to 3 per cent of India’s GDP. In order to address the issue there is a need to spread awareness on road safety through education, strict enforcement of laws, use of e-governance and proper road and traffic engineering,” said Nitin Gadkari, at the launch of a website on road safety in Delhi on Thursday.
“We will ensure that education to this effect begins in the formative years itself,” he said. “The necessary revisions have been made in the books by National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). Come April, all schools following the CBSE boards will teach all students mandatory lessons on road safety,” said Vijay Chhibber, secretary, Ministry of Roads and Transport.
“The Minister (Gadkari) has written to all the Chief Ministers of all States to embed a chapter on road safety for students between classes VI and X. They have also been sent copies of the NCERT books so that they could replicate their books,” he said. According to the officials, embedding the lesson on road safety across State Boards will be a Herculean task as each State has its own “complexities.”
“We are yet to receive responses from the State Governments as it is a little early but we know it will not be very easy to change texts,” said an official. “People dying on roads in India is a huge problem and there is very little education imparted on the subject during school years. We want to send the message to the children in their growing up years so that they grow up with the needed sensibilities, which help them become responsible drivers in future,” he said.
Statistics with the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways shows that in the year 2013, at least 1, 37,572 people died in road accidents. Highest causalities were reported in Uttar Pradesh (16, 004), followed by Tamil Nadu (15, 563), and Andhra Pradesh (14, 171). Another set of data with the ministry shows that in the decade — 2003-2012— official toll of people killed on Indian roads was 11, 54,553 and a at least 49, 61,970 people were injured in road accidents across the country.