# Establishing a research program in India focused on evaluating safety of rural roads and highways

> **NIH NIH R21** · UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO · 2020 · $164,970

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
In the absence of local evidence on how road attributes affect traffic injuries, India and other low- and middle-
income countries (LMICs) are replicating safety treatments used in high-income countries (HICs). However the
traffic environment and injury outcomes in India involves many more pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists
than in HICs. As a result, HIC interventions may not be effective in India and could even lead to an increase in
deaths and injuries. Traffic injuries already rank among the top-10 causes of death in India, and among the
top-5 causes among children 5-14 years old. Therefore, we propose to establish and build a long-term
research program in India that uses local empirical data to assess how road designs affect traffic injuries. We
will analyze crash data to identify priorities for road treatments in India, adapt existing methods for evaluating
interventions in the Indian context, and initiate a training program to build capacity of researchers and
practitioners to design safer roads. This project has three specific aims:
Aim 1: Identify research priorities for a national program to evaluate how road design affects safety. We will
develop a national traffic deaths database consisting of district-level tabulations from official government
reporting, and data extracted from a police case files in a sample of districts in the country. We analyze this
database to identify the most common crash scenarios and develop a list of road treatments that should be the
focus of a national research program aimed at evaluating the safety of road infrastructure.
Aim 2: Test a method for evaluating road designs and develop guidelines for evaluation research. We evaluate
how the use of two road treatments (vertical curbs and paved shoulders) affects traffic injury outcomes using a
case-control study design. Using these as illustrative examples, we develop general guidelines for evaluating
the safety of road infrastructure in India. These guidelines will adapt the best methodological practices for
evaluations to the crash scenarios and the quality of data available in India.
Aim 3: Build capacity of researchers and practitioners to improve safety of road infrastructure. We will assess
needs for capacity development through an online survey, and develop a blended (online plus face-to-face)
training course that will be offered to researchers and practitioners who work for the public work departments.
We will develop a web portal that will contain resources for students and educators interested in highway
safety and methods for evaluation. The project will train four graduate students at IIT Delhi by supporting their
thesis research on highway safety.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9986921
- **Project number:** 5R21TW010823-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
- **Principal Investigator:** Kanwaljeet Singh Bawa Bhalla
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $164,970
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-07-17 → 2022-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9986921

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9986921, Establishing a research program in India focused on evaluating safety of rural roads and highways (5R21TW010823-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-06-01 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9986921. Licensed CC0.

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