Participating in a workshop titled ´Improving Road Safety in Nepal´ here on Wednesday, a first of its kind here, they opined that the commission should set up a mechanism among stakeholders to make the roads safer.
The government has gathered experts and stakeholders for discussions three years after it committed itself to implementing measures to reduce road fatalities by 20 percent, at the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Meeting on road safety held in South Korea.
Nepal appears to be in the odd position of having more deaths than injuries in road accidents. The epidemic of deaths and injury on the roads is assessed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to have cost developing countries like Nepal up to 2 percent of GDP.
Secretary at the Ministry of Physical Planning and Works Purna Kadariya, winding up the workshop, said that the ministry would soon start groundwork to form the commission as the co-coordinating unit for measures to reduce road fatalities in Nepal.
Besides policies, the road safety experts defined goals related to engineering issues. They emphasized that the highways should be built and developed as ´forgiving roads´ with safety barriers, particularly in view of the alarming rate of mass fatalities in crashes. They also pointed out the provision of footpaths for the safety of vulnerable road users like children, senior citizens, pedestrians and citizens with disabilities.
"Maintaining standards in construction and applying safety measures on poorly engineered roads are the simpler ways to reduce the severity of road crashes," they said.
Traffic officials offered ways to improve road safety system management and law enforcement. Poorly equipped and working in absolute isolation at present, the Department of Traffic Management (DOTM) said it needed modern breathalyzers to discourage drink-driving, the prime reason behind night-time accidents. It also demanded that bars along highways be removed by the government to discourage drink-driving. Establishing a trauma center at intervals of 100 km along the highways coupled with facilities for emergency assistance was another need it pointed out.
DOTM also called for establishing effective driving training institutes and revision of the existing driving license test system to discourage unsafe driving.
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