Transportation
The Tricks Designers Use to Make Roads Safer
Modernizing India's highways hasn't cut down on fatalities. But a Mumbai engineering firm thinks things like curves and signs could make all the difference.
The sleek road connecting the Indian cities of Mumbai and Pune is a model of modernity. Opened in 2002, it was the country’s first access-controlled highway, a signature accomplishment for a nation that has built thousands of kilometers of new roadways in the last few years.
But there's a problem with the six-lane Mumbai-Pune Expressway. While it's much safer than the aging, dilapidated highway it replaced, it is still a very dangerous road to travel - the scene of 2,000 crashes over its 12-year history, resulting in 500 fatalities and thousands of injuries. According to an article in the online publication Scroll.in, other new roads have similarly alarming fatality rates, the vast majority of them due to human error such as speeding.