According to the World Health Organization, India and other countries in Asia will witness a staggering 65 per cent increase in vehicle population by 2020. While India is home to just 1 per cent of the global vehicle population, the country accounts for 10 per cent of road accidents worldwide – a telling statistic on the vehicle safety quotient.
Over 33 per cent of all vehicular accidents occur at night while only 20 per cent of all vehicular traffic travels after nightfall. What’s more, traffic death rates are three times greater at night than during the day.
During nights, the visibility of vehicular body is poor and hence information/cues available for the human eye are minimal. Poor visibility of vehicles during night is one of the major causes for vehicular collisions/accidents during nights. As such, good night time visibility is critical to ensuring vehicle safety.
I4S India Editor caught up with Harish Banwari, general manager, 3M India Traffic Safety Division, to gather his views on 3M’s offering for the Indian market. Excerpts:
Indian highways are undergoing a rapid transformation in terms of expansion and conversion to the multi-lane system, resulting in greater vehicular speeds and consequent increase in safety challenges. What are your views?
Road authorities have to contend with several challenges like rapidly growing vehicular traffic, challenging road & driving conditions and increased safety hazards. For over 60 years, 3M has pioneered the use of retro reflective technology in road safety and traffic management solutions to ensure safe, orderly and efficient movement of all road users and vehicles.
What are the major issues affecting road safety?
Some of the major issues affecting road safety, especially during nights and inclement weather conditions are minimal visual cues and poor visibility, and less time to react due to higher vehicle speeds.
What kind of products does 3M have to address these issues?
3M offers a wide variety of products and solutions to convey regulatory and guidance information to road users and enhance visibility of various elements on the road. 3M pioneered the development of retro reflective sheeting over 60 years ago, and continues to be the leader meeting the changing visual requirements of motorists in today’s complex and demanding roadway environment. Some of the products are:
– 3M Traffic Safety Systems – High performance materials, systems and services to effectively serve motorists in today’s challenging driving conditions.
– 3M offers wide range of high-performance retro reflective signing and pavement marking solutions for improved traffic management as well as enhanced motorist, pedestrian and occupational safety
What kind of security features are factored into these products?
There’s little bit security component in this entire business. That is more for legal security and individual security. What we do in this business is that we have primarily two parts to it; one is called highway safety – safety of people on road. Basically, we manufacture products, which are used to communicate with people on the roads such as products for signage – road signage, information signage, direction signage, cautionary and mandatory, signage, facilitate schools and hospitals signage. Therefore, that’s as far as safety of the people on the roads is concerned.
The other part is for the vehicle safety. Products such as Vehicle Conspicuity product for a truck or a vehicle travelling in the dark. With this signage, one can see the vehicle almost a kilometre away on a highway. This provides enough caution to other users of roads.
What are the benefits of using such products on Indian roads?
A marked vehicle is recognized faster than an unmarked vehicle. Increased reaction time for driver to manoeuvre vehicle to safety and enhanced assessment of parked and slow moving vehicles from a distance. These result in fewer accidents and improved safety for people and goods on board.
What are the other products lined up for future entry into the market?
Another big part of our business is called Vehicle Registration products. That where the security comes into the picture. We know there is a big problem of theft of the vehicle. People steal vehicles for criminal or terrorist activities. You can easily change a number plate, put it on another vehicle, and use it for crime such as kidnapping, robberies, etc. What we do is make a reflective product for vehicle registration which very difficult to counterfeit and comes with a security feature, just like a currency note that comes with many security features like a floating image, security thread, graphics, etc.
What is your go-to-market strategy for your products?
We are in discussion with ministry of roads and transport to standardise number plates with security features that will be difficult to counterfeit. This would go a long way to deter people with criminal intentions. Every number plate will have a unique identification number. These number plates are easily traceable as to the ownership of the vehicles. Internationally, the number plates are standard number plates and they are reflective. In India, number plates come in different shapes and sizes and numbers are non standardised.
Another security feature that we provide is the electronic vehicle registration. It is a system by which every vehicle will have a RFID tag put on the wind screen and then you have what you call as readers installed on the roads and whenever a vehicle passes by, it will immediately read that tag. In addition, anybody without that tag, the system will take a picture of the number plate. The tag will have information about registration, insurance, emission details, etc. The tag is installed on the windscreen and the readers are installed across the country and identify the vehicle.
Suppose if the vehicle does not have insurance, the reader will pass the information to the next reader on the road. In a way, it sends an alert to the next reader. If a vehicle passes without a tag, then again the reader will take a snap if the number plate and pass the information to the next reader that the vehicle has passed it without a tag.
