Safe and Sustainable Mobility by Design

Cities, unlike nature, have evolved as a result of concentrated political and/or economic power. The use of cheap fossil energy enabled them to overcome the problem of resource limits and the associated growth of urban populations. Traditional transportation works methodically with positive feedback, the so-called demand-responsive planning, in accordance with spatial and urban planning. The material aspiration level of the population has risen, population, politics, and car-oriented urban planning have moved further away from sustainable development, and only a paradigm shift in the transportation system can lead to sustainable urbanization.

Faced with ageing and insufficient transport infrastructure, growing inequities particularly on the urban fringe, increasing air pollution, and increasing rates of road injury and non-communicable disease, twenty-first century cities need to urgently implement strategies that lead to sustainable agglomerations if globally, we are going to limit global warming to within 1.5 °C. On a pathway to limiting global warming, we need to focus attention on the road transport system which contributes more than 20% of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG); sustainable urban transport systems must, therefore, be an urgent priority for policymakers across the globe.

This paper brings forth the housing and transport linkages in the broader discussion of sustainable urbanisation. This process is visible in the Tier II Metropolitan Cities in India. This paper brings the data from the primary survey of a 4.5 million city, namely Surat, to illustrate the need for establishing Housing-Transport linkages for the low-income households that are pushed to the periphery. The paper also argues that links of housing and transport with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) need to be assessed in a given context and situated within a particular city context. In other words, there is no blue print for achieving sustainable urbanisation and that the understanding of local issues is essential as is the need for what we call bottom-up or inverse planning.

Around that time, General Motors had equipped a small fleet of cars with airbags and Dinesh did research that showed positive safety benefits for airbags in this fleet of cars. His study compared three groups of real-world frontal crashes: those in which front-seat occupants were using no restraints, those in which they were wearing lap/shoulder belts, and those in which they were automatically restrained by airbags. These comparisons of the injuries sustained by front-seat occupants in real-world crashes confirmed the laboratory testing results which had indicated that airbags could offer better protection in frontal crashes than lap/shoulder belts when worn and substantially improved protection over no restraint.

The protection of children in motor vehicle crashes has improved since the introduction of child restraint systems. However, motor vehicle crashes remain one of the top leading causes of death for children. Safe design of vehicles should provide protection for the whole population in case of an accident. However, children are not small adults. As the body grows and matures, the biomechanical response changes. The development of head, neck, thorax, and pelvis changes the biomechanics of child bodies. Children under 4 years of age have a proportionally large head and an anthropometry of the neck that have led to crash fatalities for forward-facing children. The rear facing child seat distributes the crash load over a large area of the body and supports the mass of the head, which has proved to be a very efficient protection for these young children. The pelvis is not fully developed until after 12 years of age and before that there is an increased risk of poor seat belt interaction and submarining, where the lap belt slips over the pelvis resulting in severe injuries to the soft tissues in the abdominal area. Also, on-road driving studies showed that children frequently slouched when seated directly on the rear seat of the car. Slouching increases the risk of submarining. To ensure good protection, children between 4 and 12 years of age should use belt-positioning boosters together with the vehicle’s seat belt. Recent years have seen a rapid development and implementation of vehicle systems for autonomous driving and emergency maneuvers. Volunteer studies indicate that pre-crash loading forces affect the kinematics of forward-facing children, e.g., resulting in large head displacements that may increase the risk of head impacts. By providing child adaptability of the vehicle, the protection of child passengers can be further optimized. An example of this is the significant reduction of lap belt misuse when using integrated boosters. Today, computer-aided engineering is an essential part of vehicle development, and it is anticipated that safety assessments will increasingly rely on simulations. Simulation models representing children of different ages and sizes have become and will be increasingly important for the development and assessment of safety systems that accounts for population diversity. The review of human whole-body models covers both multi-body and finite element models developed for crash simulations. The European project PIPER developed an open-source scalable child model and pre-processing tools. Many children that were killed or seriously injured in traffic were not inside the vehicle, rather they were pedestrians, cyclists, or motorcycle passengers. Hence, it is important to account for the behavior and biomechanics of children in all aspects of traffic safety, from urban planning to design of energy-absorbing vehicle fronts or pedestrian friendly bonnets to cycling helmets. Child safety should not be an expensive add-on option, rather it should be standard in all vehicles. For low- and middle-income countries and families, affordable child restraint systems can be developed based on the basic principles of child biomechanics.

Safe roads and roadsides, safe vehicles, safe speed, safe road use, post-crash care: these are a summary of the safe system paradigm which is being popular for a few decades. Explicitly, this paradigm claims for safety by design. As for vehicles, concrete applications are technical regulations, standards, norms, car assessment program, codes of practices, guidelines, statements of principles, external and companies’ internal safety standards and verification/validation plans, etc. Obviously, safety by design starts by understanding and ends by proposing countermeasures to prevent/mitigate the hazards and their consequences. The starting point is therefore the use of a conceptual “accident model” required to bring insights with a formal structure into how crashes and injuries occur, how they should be analyzed and how they can be prevented or mitigated. The paper described the STAMP approach (Systems-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes), an accident causality model based on control theory and systems theory (Leveson in Engineering a safer world: systems thinking applied to safety. Engineering systems. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2011). STAMP integrates into engineering safety analysis causal factors such as software, human factors, new technologies, social and organization structures and safety culture. It is designed to address complex systems. The method behind the approach is Systems-Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA), the hazard operational analysis technique (Leveson and Thomas in An STPA primer. MIT, Cambridge, MA, 2013; STPA handbook. The European Law Student’s Association, Brussels, 2018). STAMP and STPA now receive more and more attention and interest, especially when new technologies and complex systems are considered. STPA proposes a stepwise methodological process. Once the definitions of accidents/hazards/safety constraints are made, a control structure of the whole system must be described (including relationships, i.e., control actions and information feedback, between all components (or “controllers”) of the system). Every controller imposes control processes and safety constraints on the level underneath. Every controller has a process model that includes the understanding and representations that controllers have of the controlled process. They are kept up to date through feedback loops. Accidents occur when the system gets into a hazardous state due to the inadequate enforcement of safety constraints on the system behavior. An example of control structure at the micro level is proposed in the paper as for interactions between vehicles, users and environment for automated driving. An example of control at a higher or macro-level would show relationships (control and feedback) between all stakeholders (standardization and regulation bodies, European Commission, ministries, insurance companies, road vehicle industry, driving school, hospitals, road operators, etc.). The next step consists of identifying potential unsafe actions from one processor to another. They lead to listing a first series of safety requirements. The next step consists of identifying scenarios (or control flaws) that could lead to unsafe control actions. Leveson and Thomas (STPA handbook. The European Law Student’s Association, Brussels, 2018) give guidance on how the scenarios could be generated. Once the scenarios are determined, the safety requirements can be refined and enhanced. Generally, this refinement ends up increasing the number of initial requirements and making them more precise and accurate. The paper proposes to apply STPA to the safety of automated vehicles. A list of 63 macro safety requirements is proposed that can be used both for the design of such vehicles and eventually the analysis of crashes involving them.

Transport emissions analysis plays a crucial role in air quality management, as it provides essential information to support long-term strategies for reducing fossil fuel consumption and evaluating measures such as promoting zero-emission vehicles, enforcing stricter regulations, and encouraging the use of public transportation and other alternative modes of transportation, to achieve better air quality in the cities. The challenges faced in creating a road transport emissions inventory include the requirement for standardized data collection, overcoming limitations in data availability and quality. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the resources, methods, and technologies used in creating a road transport emissions inventory for Indian cities.

Air pollution contributes substantially to premature mortality and disease burden globally, with a greater impact on low-middle-income countries. Of all the air pollutants described, PM_2.5 has been linked to the most significant health problems and premature mortality. PM_2.5 is particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 µm or less and is responsible for approximately 1.27 million attributable deaths per year in India, half of which are caused by its cardiovascular effects. They are emitted mainly by the combustion of fuels for domestic heating, industrial activities, and road transport. Studies have shown a 0.3–15% increase in cardiovascular mortality for every 10 μg/m³ increase in PM_2.5. When inhaled, PM_2.5 penetrates the lower respiratory tract and reaches the blood initiating extrapulmonary effects on the cardiovascular system via oxidative stress, systemic inflammation, direct damage, and autonomic nervous system dysregulation. These mechanisms accelerate atherosclerosis, endothelial impairment, arterial stiffness, hypercoagulability, and platelet and leucocyte activation that, in turn, lead to increased risk for diabetes, obesity, hypertension, cardiac arrhythmias, myocardial ischemia, heart failure, and stroke. Air pollution represents a major public health threat in India and underscores the importance of comprehensive longitudinal air pollution exposure assessment that can be used with health data to investigate health effects. This review presents an all-inclusive assessment of air pollution trends in India, its association with cardiovascular diseases, and the need for using existing cohort studies to evaluate the prospective effects of ambient air pollution on cardiometabolic health outcomes that might help devise steps for secondary prevention and guide policy reforms.

Medicine is an ever-changing science. As new research and clinical experience broadens our knowledge, changes in treatment and drug therapy are required. This is further compounded by ethical challenges that constitute an inseparable part of the daily decision-making processes in all areas of healthcare, particularly so in the field of prehospital emergency medicine. The prehospital care system in LMICs is fragmented and uncoordinated, lacking trained medical personnel and first responders, inadequate basic materials, and substandard infrastructure.The field of prehospital care presents several challenges to clinical research, including limited resources, ethical considerations, time constraints, safety concerns, and data collection and analysis. Fortunately, there are also several opportunities and perspectives for improving clinical research in this field, including the use of telemedicine and remote monitoring, simulation-based training, standardized protocols and guidelines, and collaborations between EMS providers, hospitals, and academic institutions.

The Vulnerable Road User (VRU) is a city dweller whose vulnerabilities extend beyond the road to living and working spaces, as well as to all the services that the city has to offer. Hence, the design of the city has to encompass these multiple factors of the lived experience of vulnerability. Taken together, the concept of labour-cells yields principles of labour-use planning for sustainable cities, which constitutes a completely different perspective from ‘land-use’ planning. Not enough theoretical work has been done on the subject, especially in the institutions of higher learning which are engaged in the debate on urban governance. The ‘vulnerability’ of the VRU is a product of social relations because the labour that the VRU creates has to be harnessed to the engine of the city to produce the profits that investors demand.

Increasing car ownership, car use, and car dependence are associated with negative side effects such as global and local environmental pollution, traffic fatalities, traffic congestion, loss of quality of live, loss of green spaces, as well as negative outcomes for public health (Banister, (2005)). Increasing the share of trips made by walking and cycling, two of the most sustainable modes of transport, can help reduce the negative impacts of overreliance on the automobile. This chapter provides a brief overview of walking and cycling levels globally—based on the latest available data at the nation and city level from household travel surveys, censuses, and recently published papers. The chapter then summarizes policies and measures implemented to promote walking and cycling successfully and reduce car dependence. Reversing growth in car ownership, car use, and car dependence will require a combination of policies that promote active travel and public transport while making car use less attractive and more costly.

Addressing environmental issues and social issues will be a key challenge for the future of transportation. There are well-documented health advantages to engaging in safe active transportation. Active transportation is also a good option to reduce human-induced global heating and noise in urban environments. The relative comparison is the product of the average measure of the stratifier within a set divided by the average measure of the stratifier within another set. Complex measures represent a single value that expresses the magnitude of inequality between all groups (quintiles) in each population and at a given time. These measures may be helpful to generate hypothesis on social aspects that may be driving inequalities in transportation systems. In summary, inequalities linked to active transportation can be measured or addressed in several ways. Addressing environmental issues and social issues will be a key challenge for the future of transportation but also for the future of the planet.

Active means of transport, such as walking and cycling, are possible alternatives to private motor vehicles for short distances in urban areas. The required physical activity of such mobility modes promotes a more active and healthier lifestyle for the individual. Healthier individuals imply reduced healthcare costs. Also, with more individuals engaged in active transport, there would be fewer motorized vehicles on the roadways, thus reducing air pollution from auto emissions, and reducing the costs of maintaining the road network. The combined economic impact of reduced healthcare costs and road maintenance costs makes active transport a viable alternative for the urban areas of our rapidly urbanizing planet and an opportunity to mitigate climate change. An initial investment in adequate infrastructure to enable active transport, such as adequate and walkable sidewalks and cycle lanes physically separated from motorized traffic, is needed. Until adequate infrastructure is available, those engaging in active transport and having to share the roadways with motorized vehicles are exposing themselves to unsafe situations. In this manuscript, we briefly review the benefits and the risks of engaging in active transport for the individual and society.

An efficient public transport system is a necessary condition for the efficient functioning of a city and more so in India where the cities are expanding at a rapid pace. However, the state of urban public transport today leaves much to be desired. This important sector has been attracting the attention of the government as well as researchers. The National Urban Transport Policy (NUTP-2006) and later on the National Transportation Development Policy Committee (NTDPC-2014) made several recommendations most of which were not implemented in letter and spirit. Development of metro systems in major cities has been a major development of the last decade. This has solved some problems but at the same time thrown up other challenges also. Analysed in this paper is the current status of urban transport in Indian cities and what needs to be done.

Urban sustainability is the key to achieving sustainable development goals promoted by the United Nations. The present chapter describes the administrative structure and the administrative preparedness for localizing sustainable development in small cities. City administration prioritizes short-term solutions which often conflict with long-term goals. Congestion faced by car traffic seems to overshadow any other mobility-related problems. There is a lack of common vision of sustainable mobility targets which is acceptable by all stakeholders. The current institutional structure requires a major overhaul to address the requirements of sustainable mobility in cities. Localizing mobility SDGs requires long-term sustained efforts and political discourse at all levels to create a common vision for urban sustainability.

Transport Safety Management must move from action based on experience, institutions, and judgement and tradition to one based on scientific research, and empirical evidence like falling off things to fracture your analysis. Dinesh’s whole life work was devoted to this overall approach. Successful countries set up institutional mechanisms for a few decades. The results became evident starting in the 1970s, many years of capacity building, institution building, and knowledge production capability through research and development and coordination among government departments. And the latter issue, which is the coordination among departments, is really very difficult for India because of the proliferation of ministries and agencies, dealing with the transport of the central level and the reproduction of 28 states and union territories. It is a Herculean task, but it still has to be done.

Institutions, organizations, politics and power matter in road safety policy and planning as they do in other sectors like environment, manufacturing, agriculture and education. However, are road safety researchers dedicated to examining these governance issues and designing solutions for them? This chapter examines the status of road safety governance and planning research. Compared to research on risk factors and interventions, road safety governance and planning has received limited attention. This topic deserves deep research investment to gain insights into the governance context of road safety policy, planning and implementation in different countries.

The notion of human rights which is essentially a European concept is relatively new. The idea of common people’s rights against the rulers and privileged classes emerged in eighteenth century Europe with rising capitalist class challenging absolute powers of monarchy and privileged classes. United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 (henceforth UDHR). In the words of the UN, “It represents the universal recognition that basic rights and fundamental freedoms are inherent to all human beings, inalienable and equally applicable to everyone, and that every one of us is born free and equal in dignity and rights.

The struggle to protect human rights which are the result of prolonged activism and lesson learnt from episodes of mass violence has been hitting a wall. The levels of impunity enjoyed by the states have led to shrinking of the rights discourse. While the international bodies and institutionalisation of human rights keep happening at the top, the space to defend the same on the ground has been fast eroding. In the farmers struggle, we saw boundaries being pushed for making real the rights which the oppressed must defend.