Estimated Lives Saved by Recently Implemented Vehicle Safety Standards in India: Implications and Future Safety Needs

Paper in proceeding, 2021

India recently mandated several vehicle safety standards. The objective of this study was to estimate the share of lives saved in different types of road users that will be saved by these standards when they take full effect and to identify and analyse India’s future road traffic fatalities. We followed the residual crash analysis approach. Explicit deterministic rules were created for each standard, providing two estimates (one conservative, one optimistic) about which types of crashes would no longer lead to fatalities. The rules were applied to the historical in-depth crash database Road Accident Sampling System India (RASSI). While the recently introduced safety standards will undoubtedly save lives in India, we estimated that they are not sufficient to ensure the 50% reduction in road traffic fatalities that India has committed to by 2030. Our estimates of future crashes call for increased attention to fatal crashes involving PTW riders and pedestrians, either through safety standards or other means.