US to Assist India's Efforts to Make Roads Safe: Nitin Gadkari

India, where an average of 1.5 lakh fatalities occur every year in road accidents, is in desperate need of laws, infrastructure, and technology for road safety. In the nearly 5 lakh road accidents in the country last year, 1.46 lakh people were killed. Thirteen states accounted for 87.2 per cent of the total number of road accidents in India in 2015, including Tamil Nadu Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, etc.. Gadkari said, "Their experience and their present rules and regulations, codification, all the manuals are there and they are ready to share all types of manuals, code and rules and regulations with us."

While the Indian government has been working on the new Road Safety Bill in an endeavour to introduce all-encompassing, stringent laws in reference to road safety, the other facet, infrastructure, of the issue is often overlooked. Gadkari explained, "In India we are critically facing the problem of road accidents. We have 96,000 kms of road length as national highway and 40 per cent of national traffic on this two per cent of road. We are facing a lot of accidents on national highway." The US has also promised "technical co-operation for standardisation of our Indian code" for road construction, bridges, and flyovers.

He added, "India needs USD 1 trillion for developing new roads, ports, rail lines, and airports over the next few years and US companies can provide the necessary expertise as well as capital to enable the robust growth of this sector."