Transportation
Meet the Women Behind India's 3D 'Zebra' Crossings
A mother-daughter artist duo has designed a simple but potentially effective solution to a major road safety problem.
Indian roads are notoriously unsafe for pedestrians and drivers. In 2014, an average of 16 people were killed in road crashes every hour; almost 40 percent of these crashes happened because of speeding. The country needs a comprehensive package of solutions to reduce the speed and volume of vehicles on the roads. But while these big fixes are in the works, a smaller, simpler one in Ahmedabad, a city in the Western state of Gujarat, is getting some attention.
A 28-year-old local artist named Saumya Pandya Thakkar (on right in the picture) has designed a distinctive 3D “zebra” crossing (pictured above) with the help of her 60-year-old mother Shakuntala Pandya (on the left).