States embrace tighter speed limits

NEw young delhi: After due west Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, is on trend to officially institutionalise a new safe speed limit policy. This shift, experts say, could be a potential game-changer as India battles the world’s highest burden of road crash deaths, caused mainly by speeding and with Uttar Pradesh consistently recording the highest number of road crash fatalities over the last four years.The policy marks a shift from India’s long-standing practice of fixing speed limits solely by road category to context-based limits for school zones (as low as 25 kmph) and high-pedestrian areas. UP’s progress follows West Bengal, which notified new context-based speed limits across the state in January 2025 based on the same guidance.In September 2025, the UP transport department and IIT-Kharagpur signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to design a statewide road safety action plan, with enforceable speed management guidelines at its core.Kinjal Singh, UP state transport commissioner, said a draft policy prepared with technical guidance from IIT-Kharagpur has been circulated to all road-owning agencies and other arms of government, including the traffic police. “After incorporating the suggestions from different government departments, we will proceed towards a formal adoption of the policy, after which road-owning agencies will revise the speed limits and take up necessary action to institutionalise them,” Singh added.Beyond reduced speed limits, the draft proposes recording all crashes on the Integrated Road Accident Database (iRAD) and analysing them against notified speed limits. It also calls for adopting a Safe System approach covering roads, vehicles, speeds and road users, with special focus on vulnerable users.The policy further proposes identifying accident-prone spots using iRAD data, installing signage, markings and traffic calming, and deploying speed cameras and electronic monitoring for enforcement. It also envisages public awareness campaigns and a pilot project in one district before statewide rollout.Another official in the state transport department said a pilot district is likely to be identified by the end of January as part of Road Safety Month activities.In UP, road fatalities figures have risen steadily from 21,227 in 2021 to 24,118 in 2024. This upward trend in the state aligns with the national total, which grew from 153,972 fatalities in 2021 to 177,177 in 2024.West Bengal, while recording significantly fewer fatalities than Uttar Pradesh, also followed the national trajectory of increasing road deaths, moving from 5,800 in 2021 to 6,678 in 2024.Papia Ghosh Roy Choudhury, special secretary in West Bengal’s urban development and municipal affairs department, said the eastern state has translated the safe-speed framework into on-ground action by capping urban speeds at 50 kmph while introducing lower limits of 25 kmph around schools and 30 kmph in market and high-pedestrian areas.In Kolkata, a four-slab urban speed regime of 25, 30, 40 and 50 kmph has been notified, with new signage installed on the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass as the first step. Other key corridors where this initiative is being expanded include Judges Court Road, Rani Rashmoni Avenue, Diamond Harbour Road and a stretch of AJC Bose Road.“Traffic police have notified the new speed limits for enforcement, and speed-trap cameras are being deployed at 30 high-fatality locations along the 32-km-long EM Bypass corridor,” she said.Beyond Kolkata, similar initiatives have been rolled out in Purba Medinipur district, starting with one state and one national highway corridor.The need for a (slowdown) policyThe latest nationwide data on road crash fatalities presented in the recently concluded winter session of Parliament said that 70% (123,947 out of 177,177) of India’s road crash deaths in 2024 were attributed to overspeeding.Bhargab Maitra, professor at IIT Kharagpur and a key architect of the policy, said that despite potential data inaccuracies, the trend is too significant to ignore and that there is a direct correlation between speeding and the deaths of vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, cyclists and two-wheeler riders.“A pedestrian hit at 30 kmph has a 90% chance of survival. At 60 kmph, survival drops to 10%,” he said.He said Kolkata adopted a city-wide maximum speed limit of 50 kmph aligned with European urban standards. “This is not just about signage. It is about creating a uniform, legally backed system so enforcement technology, funding, and police protocols align. Without a state-level policy, districts set arbitrary limits, enforcement becomes inconsistent, and funding for aligned activities such as contactless enforcement cannot be secured,” he explained.The speed management policy is anchored in the Safe System approach, a globally accepted framework that treats road safety as a shared responsibility. Instead of blaming individual drivers after crashes, the approach assumes human error is inevitable — and systems must be designed so such errors do not result in death. Its five pillars include safer roads, safer vehicles, safer users, better emergency response and, critically, safe speed.“Speed is the force multiplier. Even if vehicles are safer and trauma care is better, if impact speeds are too high, the human body cannot survive,” Maitra said.Kailash Tiwari, an international road safety consultant, raised another often overlooked issue to advocate for reduced speed limits. “Cars are crash-tested at around 64 kmph, yet on expressways they are routinely driven at 120 kmph or higher,” he pointed out.Tiwari has advocated speed management for nearly two decades and introduced 25 kmph school-zone limits in Kerala in 2005.While there is no data from West Bengal yet to suggest success, previous efforts have shown positive outcomes.An analysis by the National Transportation Planning and Research Centre in Thiruvananthapuram in 2014 reported a 17% drop in total road accidents in Kerala from 41,645 in 2006 to 35,013 in 2010 following multi-agency measures launched in 2007, crediting sustained enforcement by police and the motor vehicles department on speed regulations, including speed governors on heavy vehicles.Tiwari said enforcement alone cannot solve speeding and that road design must encourage slower travel. “Narrowing lane widths from 3.7 metres to 3 metres naturally reduces speed,” he said. “Traffic calming using IRC 99 standards such as speed breakers, roundabouts and carriageway narrowing works because drivers respond to geometry, not just signs.”A September 2025 WRI India report showed that applying design-speed management, geometric correction, traffic calming, and conflict-point reduction under the Bloomberg Initiative for Global Road Safety reduced pedestrian crashes, fatalities and serious injuries across redesigned intersections and arterial corridors in Mumbai. The assessment found that pedestrian involvement in crashes, fatalities and serious injuries declined at most treated sites, with Namaha junction recording a 100% reduction in road-crash fatalities.The Delhi government is also working to expand a safer streets programmes for children and caregivers initiative by rolling out “Safe School Zones” to enhance pedestrian safety and create around 100 such safe pathways across Delhi after a successful pilot.In 2024-25, Helsinki, the Finnish capital, achieved the rare milestone of a full year without a single traffic-related death. Among the factors cited by the European Commission’s Urban Mobility Observatory, a posted speed limit of 30 kmph on more than half of Helsinki’s streets since 2021 — down from 50 kmph — was identified as a key contributor. Alongside lower speeds, Vision Zero relied on safer road design, consistent enforcement of traffic rules, and safer vehicles and travel modes to ensure human errors do not result in death or serious injury.