NHAI constitutes a dedicated team for safety and maintenance of national highways 

In 2022, a third of fatal road accidents (168,491) in the country happened on the national highways. In a bid to improve the operation, maintenance and safety of highways, a dedicated corridor management unit has been constituted.

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) on May 17 issued a notification to constitute the corridor management unit with the objective of giving operation and maintenance of highways top priority under all circumstances.

“All activities related to maintenance (repair, signage, markings), management (traffic, tolling) and monitoring (accidents, black spots) for roads and buildings of national highways are effectively managed by a dedicated team,” said a NHAI notification.

At present, nearly half the length of entire national highways (14.6 million km) network is under operation and management and is being looked by the same team of project implementation unit (PIU) which looks after the award, construction and allied works.

“In order to effectively focus on the end to end operation and maintenance of highways, it has been decided to create a corridor management unit in PIU and post a dedicate corridor management officer under the project director,” said the order.

These officers will look into highway safety, conducting root cause analysis of accidents and mitigation measures, monitoring the maintenance of highways, including post-execution evaluation, ensuring prevention of encroachments on highways and management of accidents and incidents in coordination with concerned departments.

The high accident rate on national highways has remained a cause for concern for the authorities. During 2022, a total of 461,312 accidents were recorded in the country, of which, 151,997 (32.9%) took place on the National Highways (NH) including Expressways, 106,682 (23.1%) on State Highways (SH) and the remaining 202,633 (43.9%) on other roads.

The Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways is also working towards various aspects such as road user behaviour, road infrastructure, vehicle standards, enforcement of traffic regulations, and the role of technology in accident prevention.     

It is actively involved in initiatives such as implementation of modern transportation systems, road safety audits, and international collaborations to learn from global best practices. Initiatives like the Electronic Detailed Accident Report (e-DAR) for real-time data analysis and automated vehicle inspection centers are also underway to combat road accidents.