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The Ministry of Road Transport & Highways held a Regional Manthan Conference on road safety at Mumbai on 24 August 2026 for Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa and the Union Territory of Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu, chaired by Justice A M Sapre (Retd.), Chairman of the Supreme Court Committee on Road Safety.
Five programmes were deliberated: the Zero Fatality District initiative, now expanded to 100 critical districts across 15 states that average over 400 fatalities each a year; PM RAHAT cashless treatment; the Rah-Veer Good Samaritan reward; the Sadak Suraksha Mitra youth volunteer programme; and the Data-Driven Hyperlocal Intervention framework with its five-stage cycle.
States were asked to carry out root-cause analysis of fatalities and prepare District Road Safety Plans towards India's goal of halving road deaths by 2030; the release notes that 18-45 year olds account for 66.1 per cent of all road fatalities.
Guarantee cashless emergency treatment so that no road accident victim is lost for want of money or paperwork inside the golden hour
Key: Central Sector Scheme of MoRTH notified under Section 162 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 and launched by the Prime Minister on 13 February 2026; up to Rs. 1.5 lakh per victim for up to 7 days from the accident, on any category of road, regardless of insurance status; stabilisation treatment for up to 24 hours in non-life-threatening and 48 hours in life-threatening cases, subject to police authentication on an integrated digital system; runs on MoRTH's eDAR platform integrated with the National Health Authority's Transaction Management System (TMS 2.0) and linked to the 112 emergency helpline
Reward and legally shield bystanders who take an accident victim to hospital within the golden hour
Key: Announced by MoRTH on 21 April 2025; Rs. 25,000 cash award per incident with a Certificate of Appreciation where the case involves major surgery, brain or spinal cord injury, at least three days of hospitalisation or death during treatment; the ten best Rah-Veers of the year receive Rs. 1,00,000 each during National Road Safety Month; protection from legal proceedings without consent flows from Section 134A of the Motor Vehicles Act as inserted by the 2019 amendment, with Good Samaritan rules notified vide GSR 594(E) dated 29 September 2020; awards are recorded on the e-DAR portal by State and UT Transport Departments
Concentrate a full engineering-enforcement-emergency care-education package on the districts where the most people die
Key: Expanded nationally to 100 critical districts across 15 states, together averaging over 400 fatalities per district each year; the framework is tailored to each district's crash profile; implemented by MoRTH in partnership with the non-profit SaveLIFE Foundation and aimed at a 50 per cent cut in crash deaths by 2030
Build a district-level cadre of trained youth road safety volunteers, given that 18-45 year olds are 66.1 per cent of all road fatalities
Key: Jointly conceptualised by MoRTH and the Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports; volunteers recruited through the MY Bharat platform and given defined roles as Crash Scene Coordinators, data collectors for Road Safety Auditors, and Awareness & Engagement Leads; focused on the top 100 high-fatality districts, where District Road Safety Committees are the governance mechanism
Move District Road Safety Committees from intuition-based planning to evidence-based action on crash data
Key: A structured five-stage cycle - Alignment Meeting, Capacity Building, Interventions Planning, Implementation and Impact Assessment - with interventions matched to each district's own crash profile
Enables a scheme for cashless treatment of road accident victims during the golden hour; PM RAHAT is notified under it. The 2019 amendment also inserted the statutory definition of 'golden hour'.
Protects Good Samaritans - a person who helps an accident victim is not liable in civil or criminal proceedings and cannot be compelled to disclose identity; Good Samaritan rules were notified vide GSR 594(E) dated 29 September 2020. This is the legal foundation of the Rah-Veer scheme.
Provides for constitution of the National Road Safety Board to advise the Central and State Governments on all aspects of road safety and traffic management.
The overarching reform - sharply higher penalties, Good Samaritan protection, the National Road Safety Board, a Motor Vehicle Accident Fund, recall of defective vehicles, and accountability of contractors and road-owning agencies for faulty design or maintenance.
The order by which the Supreme Court constituted its Committee on Road Safety, whose Chairman presided over this conference.
Monitors implementation of road safety laws and of the Supreme Court's directions by states and UTs, issues directions of its own and holds state review meetings
Statutory advisory body on road safety and traffic management - standards for road design, construction and maintenance, vehicle safety standards, crash investigation and road safety programmes
India's first national road accident database, integrating Police, Health, Transport and road-owning agencies; a mobile application lets police log a crash with photographs and video against a unique ID, and analytics identify accident-prone locations and causes
The primary district-level governance mechanism for road safety, into which the ZFD, Sadak Suraksha Mitra and DDHI programmes all feed
The Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act, 2019 gave 'golden hour' a statutory definition: the period of up to one hour following a traumatic injury during which prompt medical care has the highest probability of preventing death. The entire emergency-care chain described at this conference is built around it - Rah-Veer to get the victim moving in the first minutes, the 112 helpline to route them to a designated hospital, and PM RAHAT to remove the payment question at the admission desk. Section 162 of the Act is the enabling provision for a golden-hour treatment scheme, which is why PM RAHAT is notified under a transport law rather than a health law.
Simple Analogy: Think of the golden hour as a fuse lit at the moment of impact. Rah-Veer is the bystander who picks the victim up, 112 is the map to the nearest hospital, and PM RAHAT is the guarantee that nobody stops at the counter to argue about money while the fuse burns down.
SDG target 3.6 sought to halve global deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents by 2020, and SDG 11.2 seeks safe, affordable and sustainable transport systems by 2030 - the SDG hooks behind the Decade of Action.
PM RAHAT runs on the NHA's Transaction Management System 2.0, the same claims backbone used for PM-JAY - one ministry's scheme riding another's digital infrastructure.
The single emergency number under the Ministry of Home Affairs is the routing layer for PM RAHAT: a victim, a Rah-Veer or any bystander dials 112 to find the nearest designated hospital and request an ambulance.
The Mera Yuva Bharat platform under the Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports is the volunteer registry for Sadak Suraksha Mitra, an example of youth-mobilisation infrastructure being reused across sectoral ministries.
GS Paper 2 > Governance > Government Policies and Interventions for Development
General Awareness > Government Schemes
General Awareness > Current Affairs and Transport
General Awareness > Government Schemes and Insurance
Road safety schemes and the Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act, 2019 recur regularly in Prelims, SSC and state PSC papers.
Defined by the Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act, 2019 as the period of up to one hour after a traumatic injury when prompt care has the highest probability of preventing death.
A Good Samaritan who takes a road accident victim to hospital within the golden hour; entitled to Rs. 25,000 per incident and protected from legal proceedings without consent under Section 134A.
Electronic Detailed Accident Report - the national road accident database, erstwhile iRAD, developed by IIT Madras, implemented by NIC and supported by the World Bank at a project cost of Rs. 258 crore.
The district-level governance body through which the Zero Fatality District, Sadak Suraksha Mitra and DDHI programmes are executed.