Context India has taken an unprecedented initiative of road infrastructure development but the road crashes and resulting fatalities remain a major social concern. Globally, India ranks 1st in terms of road fatalities. Speeding contributes to 70% of the crashes and 67% of the fatalities on Indian roads. The share of vulnerable road users in road fatalities is as high as 50% (MoRTH, Govt. of India, 2020). All these clearly indicate that speeding is a major contributing factor to road traffic fatalities in India. Therefore, there is a dire need to formulate speed management policy from a ‘safe system’ approach.

Process In the process of developing speed management policy, due emphasis is given on protective quality of roads, roadside infrastructure and activities, vehicles, and human tolerance thresholds for fatal and severe injury. Since 2019, IIT Kharagpur with the support of the GRSP A&G programme is producing evidence towards the adoption of speed management policies in India; specifically with the use of a threefold approach which includes (i) road safety audit of several road stretches, (ii) review of present guidelines and practices, and (iii) consultation with road development and enforcement authorities.

Analysis The emerging issues and gaps with respect to speed management are identified in eleven key areas such as safe speed limits, engineering measures, speed monitoring, enforcement, capacity building, education and awareness, etc.

Outcomes The key outcomes include the issues and gaps in each of the eleven key areas and the corresponding policy recommendations for in-country speed management.