Road users’ behavior also differs on urban roads than the same on highways. Moreover on urban roads, there observed a highly mixed non-motorized traffic including pedestrians, cyclists, carts, animal driven vehicles etc. In fact, urban roads are more prone to accidents as the traffic characteristic is heterogeneous whereas on highways, a homogeneous traffic is observed. In fact, at metropolitan or city level, there exists no such authority responsible to check safety on urban roads.
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So far, urban roads are not given priority for safety. In India, road safety audit has become now mandatory for all the newly taken up projects on National Highways and all those road projects funded by the international funding agencies. A carefully thought out safety audit program can bring invaluable benefits by helping in the identification of possible hazards and in turn assist in evolving appropriate corrective and cautionary measures to minimize the hazards. The Safety audit is derived on the principle of “Prevention is better than cure”. Road safety audit is a procedure to evaluate the accident potentiality and the performance of the road with respect to safety. Road safety audit thus becomes not only desirable but also critical. Such striking figures underline the fact that there is a compelling need for use of certain specific road safety parameters. The planning commission has estimated the annual loss due to road accidents at a staggering amount of Rs. The number of fatalities and injuries has continued to increase at an average rate of 5% per year and currently 90,000 persons killed and over 4,00,000 persons injured. Apart from the loss of life, these accidents cost the society billions of rupees every year by way of hospital care, property damage, court cases, insurance coverage and loss of fuel. According to official estimates, by the year 2020, road accidents would occupy the third position among all types of deaths. With 80,000 fatalities per annum (in the year, 2001) India has 10% of total world’s road fatalities and the road safety situation in the country continues to worsen. The contribution of Indian in this unfortunate figure is also quite glaring. more Expert estimates indicate that around 5 million people die of road accidents every year in developing countries. Expert estimates indicate that around 5 million people die of road accidents every year in develo.