Preventing Man-Made Disaster Through Proactive Policing: Reducing Road Accident Deaths and Injuries in Delhi

The primary focus of disaster-related literature historically has been on natural disasters due to their severity. There is less than sufficient focus in the academic world regarding man-made disasters despite their high magnitude. While the world is exposed to the hazards of natural disasters often, the frequency of man-made disasters is also very high. Seventy-five million people died in World War II due to deliberate genocides, massacres and bombings. Millions of people were displaced or made refugees from 1990 to 2003 during fifty-nine armed conflicts in forty-eight separate locations. The recent casualties in the ongoing wars between Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Palestine further strengthen the overall narrative of man-made disasters. Road traffic deaths is another critical area where lots of human lives are lost every year. The world loses 1.3 million people every year due to road traffic crashes. 1,54,732 people lost their lives in road accidents in India in the year 2019. Road traffic accidents fall in the category of man-made disasters. The present article examines road traffic accidents and deaths in Delhi. It also analyses the role of various proactive measures taken by the Delhi Traffic Police in curbing the increasing trend of fatalities on roads. These measures were implemented after proper analyses of the accident sites. These measures broadly fall in the domain of road engineering, law enforcement and education of road users, technically known as triple E (engineering, enforcement and education). Installation of over-speeding violation detection cameras and red-light violation detection cameras on affected roads has substantially reduced the number of accidents and has also acted as psychological deterrents for road users. The analysis tries to use the theoretical construct of triple T (targeting, testing and tracking) used by Prof. Sherman in the context of evidence-based policing for preventing crime.