Dr. Subhamay Gangopadhyay appointed as new IRF India Chapter President
Held on 26th September 2020, the Governing Council of the IRF India Chapter (IC) has elected during its meeting Dr. Subhamay Gangopadhyay to take over as the new President of the IRF IC from Mr. G. Sharan.
Mr. G. Sharan, IRF IC Chairman since April 2018, prematurely stepped down owing to his busy schedule. IRF IC would like to thank Mr. G. Sharan for his able guidance during his tenure as Chairman, particularly during the difficult lockdown period resulting from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. S. Gangopadhyay formally took over as Chairman on 19th October 2020. "I look forward to contributing to the activities of IRF IC in future. While the broad goals of the Roads and Transport Sector will be the focus, Sustainable Development Goals especially for the Road Safety issues will be the main priority areas of the IRF IC mandate. I convey my best wishes to the entire IRF family and hope the year 2021 will be safe and healthy for each one of us." said Dr. Gangopadhyay in his investiture speech.
IRF IC heartily welcomes Dr. S. Gangopadhyay as its President. With his vast experience of the sector and his academic excellence, IRF IC looks forward to a fruitful period of wellbeing with his guidance and leadership.
Dr. Subhamay Gangopadhyay obtained his BE (Civil) from the University of Calcutta, M.Tech in Transportation System Engineering from IIT/Kanpur and PhD from the University of New Brunswick, Canada under the Commonwealth Scholarship Plan. He served as Scientist in the Central Road Research Institute, New Delhi since 1979 and was its Director between 2009 and 2015.
Dr. Gangopadhyay’s main areas of specialisation include Traffic Engineering, Road Safety, Transportation Planning and Modelling, Interaction of Environment with Urban Transport and skill development in the area of Traffic and Transportation. He has forty years of experience in the area of Traffic Engineering and Transportation Planning.
During his professional career, he has published around a hundred papers, many of which were published in referred journals. After retirement, he has been Visiting faculty at IIEST, Shibpur, his alma mater (erstwhile BE College Shibpur), before joining as Training Expert of a Road Safety Project at NHAI. Presently, he is also engaged as Programme Manager of IndiaRAP under the International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP).
IRF India expresses concern at increased number of fatal road Accidents in the country
The year 2019 has seen an increased number of road accident deaths in the state of Gujarat, in India, which recorded Thirteenth highest number of road deaths in the country.
As per latest National Road Accident data released by the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) for the year 2019, road accidents killed over 151,000 people in 2019 crashes. The number of crashes left 451,000 injured in the country.
"India accounts for about 12% of the global road accident fatalities. Several initiatives for improving road safety such as the amendment of the Motor Vehicles Act (MVA), improvement in roads from the engineering perspective, road safety audits at all stages of road construction beginning from from the planning stage besides identification and remedy of black spots in a sustained systematic manner on war footing can help bring down fatal road accidents in the country", said Mr. K K Kapila, President Emeritus, International Road Federation (IRF).
"India is signatory to the United Nation's Decade of Action Plan for road safety across the world which aims to reduce road fatalities by 50% by the year 2020. But the target seems nowhere near", said Mr. Kapila.
He added: "Strict enforcement of the new Motor Vehicle Act wearing of helmets and seat belts , improvement in road engineering, clearing of black spots can help in reduction of fatal road accidents in the state".
