BRIEF BACKGROUND

Road Safety in the developing countries is assuming a serious dimension with fatal and serious accidents on the rise. Other areas of concern are the constant rise in number of traffic violations, and unabated congestion resulting in road rage, crime, and pollution.

Developing countries are investing huge amount of resources in increasing their highway capacity without adequate research and investments in the area of traffic management. In parallel to the expansion and building of new roadway network, local automobile industry in joint ventures with global automobile manufacturers is forging ahead with introducing a variety of models in automobile market. In India, for example, the annual growth rate of motor vehicles is as high as 10%.

Role and responsibility of traffic management agencies have not been adequately defined leaving ambiguity in all respective areas of traffic engineering, road safety education, driver training, vehicle regulation, traffic control and enforcement. It may be surprising to note that the subject of Traffic Engineering, which is the fulcrum of traffic management, has been either totally missed out or neglected. Traffic Engineering has not been adopted by the government departments either at the federal, state or local authority levels. Without the application of scientific traffic engineering on a sustained and continuous basis, traffic control and enforcement remain handicapped.

Traffic Engineering Centers were established by the developed countries like USA and U.K. since 1930's, however, countries like India are still outsourcing the traffic engineering applications to consultancy services leading to non-development of a responsible road agency and safe road user culture.

To initiate the process of appreciating the concept and introduction of Traffic Engineering Centres by the city/highways authority in the developing countries, especially India, the IRTE is organizing a two-day International Workshop supported by Ministry of Shipping Road Transport and Highways in New Delhi on January 6 and 7, 2006.