Uniting India through #1CroreSe125CroreSteps to put Pedestrian Safety on National Priority through #Right2Walk from Kanyakumari to Kashmir.

Millions of Indians drive on Roads and 400 of them never come back home, everyday. Road Deaths are the biggest cause of unnatural deaths in our country. Pedestrians are killed across the country and contribute to the significant share of these deaths caused by road accidents. As per NCRB statistics, last year, out of 1,36,834 (it is 1.42 lakh according to the Ministry of Road Transport Data) people who died in road crashes in the country, were 12,400 were pedestrians, constituting a share of 9.1 per cent of the total deaths.

Understanding the gravity of the situation and believing in “Sadak Suraksha – Jeevan Raksha “, NGO, DRIVE SMART DRIVE SAFE,   launched a unique project titled ‘1Crore Steps for Safer Roads’, a movement   that started on 28th July 2018 from Kanyakumari has now transformed into a national movement through the tremendous support from millions of people all across the country.

Have we ever thought that with the current state of affairs on our Roads, we Indians soon will be limited to walk artificially within a park or within our private boundaries and the challenges faced in walking on our Public Roads are only going to increase, if we don’t put our #Right2Walk on national priority to improve the situation urgently?

The integral part of the campaign is Public Walk Donation and signing the public petition to support  #Right2Walk. We are appealing to public and all the participants of the campaign to sign this petition to expose difficulties of pedestrians  on our roads as the day to day basis hurdles of life. With this petition we would like to sensitise all stakeholders towards ever increasing challenges to claim our public spaces and repair our ecosystem for people to walk, and respect the right to walk.

The project entails a record walk from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, a distance of 3600 kilometers, to be covered by Subramanian ‘Subu’ Narayanan who is a member of ClubD2S, & an employee of Hella India and will cover about 20 cities across South, West and North India. The project envisages participation and engagement from the general public in the form of short walks to show their solidarity with Subramanian ‘Subu’ Narayanan and the cause, by “Walk Donation” from anywhere in the country. #MeraKadamMeriSuraksha - A first of its kind in India to support the cause of arresting alarming deaths due to road accidents. Walk donation is done on www.onecroresteps.com , and individuals are continuously registering on the website for which the link is : www.onecroresteps.com

With this programme, the NGO wants to highlight the difficulties of pedestrians in the country. Most of the public places meant for walking, have failed to provide adequate infrastructure for citizens to be able to walk freely. Our campaign aims to address this problem and appeal to all stakeholders to urgently take actions for ensuring Indians can freely walk in these public spaces which were originally built with the idea of safe and friendly use by the citizens and that their #Right2Walk is guaranteed.

There seems to be inadequate priority towards pedestrian’s amenities. Pavements are the first casualty of street widening to accommodate cars. The footpath becomes a free-parking zone. To walk freely, pedestrians need space to walk. When footpaths are difficult to reach due to the way cars are parked, people  end up walking on the road and chances of getting hit by the vehicles increases enormously.

Walking is the most important mode of transport in cities, yet frequently data on it are not collected and many planners do not think it as a form of actual transport. Because of this neglect, facilities provided specifically for walking are often either absent or badly maintained and pedestrians form the largest single category of road user deaths. There are social, medical, environmental and economic reasons for promoting walking, for it is an equitable, healthy, non-polluting and inexpensive form of transport. Moreover, ‘foot cities’ tend to be pleasurable places to live, with access to facilities within walking distance frequently cited as a key indicator of quality of life of a neighbourhood. The ‘neighbourhood unit’ as a planning concept evolved in response to the degenerated environmental and social conditions fostered as a consequence of industrial revolution in the early 1900s. One of the earliest authors to attempt a definition of the ‘neighbourhood unit’ in fairly specific terms was Clarence Arthur Perry (1872-1944), a New York planner. During a period where road sense had not yet amalgamated with the social conscious, and many of the urban tools we now use to manage the threat posed by vehicular traffic did not exist, or were not in abundance (such as pedestrian crossings, traffic lights and road signs), developing cities such as New York, which embraced the motor car, suffered street fatality rates in excess of one child a day. Since the 20th century, the problem seems to be the same, however it’s a shame that we are still not able to cope it up with a viable solution for a developing country like India with multiple road users.

The Unique National Campaign of “Public Walk Donation” for safer Roads is already a huge success, it already Crossed 2 Crore Steps in its 1st 30 Days, With such massive National support for the campaign, its organisers NGO Drive Smart Drive Safe (ClubD2S) have now set a New Goal of 125 Crore Steps public walk donations for Safer Roads with an extension campaign, #MeraKadamMeriSuraksha.

The programme is supported by The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, NGO Arrivesafe, The Raahgiri Foundation, ACMA, SIAM, FICCI, CII-Yi, FADA, ASDC & AIAWA and partnered by Hella, WABCO & Brakes India.

Understanding the benefit of walk, the project is appealing to citizens of India  to donate steps  #MeraKadamMeriSuraksha. Citizens feeling the need for bringing change on Indian roads have started walking and donating them on www.onecroresteps.com They are also challenging others to start walking and donating steps as well. Donating 125 Crore Steps together will get attention of the country and make “Arresting Road Deaths” a National Priority. Equity in road space for pedestrians will go a long way  to safeguard our #Right2Walk .

The project aims to demonstrate how our “Daily Walk Donation” can arrest alarming road deaths by encouraging walking, at the same time even to safeguard volunteers and participants of this campaign while they are attempting to donate such massive #1CroreSe125CroreSteps, ensuring #Right2Walk is a must pre-condition for their personal safety as well and hence this petition.