Bengaluru: Symposium addresses human behavioral factors in road traffic injuries

Bengaluru: A symposium on road traffic injury prevention held at Nimhans on Friday focused on human behavioural risk factors that contributed to road traffic injuries (RTIs) in the city. 

Taking RTIs as a public health issue, various stakeholders from Nimhans and the traffic police discussed how speeding and lack of helmet and seat belt use led to a heightened risk of RTIs and discussed measures that need to be taken to prevent and reduce the risks of road crashes and fatalities.

With a heightened focus on drink-driving, the panel comprising top police officials and health professionals released a joint report on an assessment of drunk-driving made in March by Bengaluru Traffic Police, Nimhans, Johns Hopkins International Injury Research Unit, and Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety.

M A Saleem, Director General of Police, Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Economic Offences and Special Units, Karnataka, who was the chief guest at the event, said there is a need for raising awareness about the right road safety behaviours among school students and youngsters.

B R Ravikanthe Gowda, Inspector General of Police (Central) emphasised the need to expand the scope of such studies to other districts such as Tumakuru, Belagavi, and Bengaluru Rural as they see a high rate of accidents and fatalities as well. Dr Pratima Murthy, Director, Nimhans, emphasised the need for Nimhans to branch out its expertise to other district hospitals across the state using the hub and spoke model.

“The state government has approved our proposal to implement this plan in Hubbali this year,” she said.