Safetipin Design safer communities

Making India’s Urban Streets Safer By Design

India has the highest number of traffic-crash deaths in the world. Of the 140,000 fatalities that occur annually, more than 40 percent take place in urban areas. A large percentage of these are pedestrians and bicyclists, who typically comprise more than half of the road users in Indian cities. Often, motorists are booked for recklessness, whereas the actual cause and subsequent solution may lie elsewhere. Yet, the popular discourse around road safety is focused on measures that make vehicular-use safer, such as enforcing traffic rules, the use of helmets and seat belts and avoiding drunk-driving amongst others. The real causes of accidents are almost never considered.

Scientifically, an accident is a multi-factor event that hinges on three variables – road-user behavior, vehicle characteristics, and physical infrastructure. Creating better physical infrastructure is the most tangible action that will ensure better road safety, and it needs minimal enforcement. It therefore essential that all our roads be designed as per standard road safety engineering principles and be equipped with necessary physical features such as mid-block crossings and refuge points, to minimize accidents.

The Benefits of “Complete” Streets

Roads form the largest percentage of public space available for city dwellers. For example, in Mumbai, streets form 78 percent of the total non-buildable public space. Thus, creating a network of well-designed streets can result in multiple benefits for the city in terms of quality of life. Firstly, utilizing leftover spaces along the road network to develop comfortable and attractive public spaces can not only help accommodate ancillary functions characteristic of the Indian street-space, such as chai-stalls and street vendors , but also help support local commercial and cultural activity, including tourism. Secondly, comprehensive street design can serve critical environmental functions for the city such as reducing the heat-island effect through urban-greening and recycling storm-water run-off through built-in bio-swales.

Thirdly, it gives civic authorities the chance to ensure that urban streets are planned for the entire range of road users, and not just vehicles. Catering to the mobility needs of vulnerable users such as physically challenged persons, the elderly and children is absolutely essential. Integrating cycle-tracks and providing adequate and uninterrupted walking space can promote non-motorized transport (NMT), leading to substantial health benefits.

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Safety Auditing of Hyderabad done by VOICE 4 Girls using Safetipin App

Hyderabad: City-based non-profit organisation VOICE 4 Girls has partnered with the British Deputy High Commission, Hyderabad to raise awareness around gender-based violence among college students and government school girls in the city.

The three- month project included awareness building workshops and a safety audit of public spaces in the Hyderabad. As part of the audit, college students from seven colleges in the city mapped hazards, harassment and public amenities in the city on a smartphone application called Safetipin. This data has been covered over the period of one month and presents a good picture of the safety scenario in the city.

A meet to discuss the findings has been organized on December 5. This event will also mark the end of the project and the UN's '16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence'. Andrew Mc Allister, the British Deputy High Commissioner of Hyderabad will be the Chief Guest at the event.

The conference will also be attended by Swati Lakra, SHE Team, Hyderabad Police, Ramakrishna Ramaswamy, Ex- Vice Chancellor, Hyderabad Central University, Sunitha Krishnan, Prajwala, Anant Maringanti, Hyderabad Urban Lab, Reddy Prakash, UNICEF and Aisha Mahmood Farooqi, President of Anveshi Research Centre....Article Source

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SafetiPin, an App to Create Safe Cities and Prevent Harassment

Safetipin is a free application created in New Delhi (India), to try to create safer cities for women through public participation. The status of women in India is especially hard because, according to the Vicente Ferrer Foundation, one woman is raped every 20 minutes . This app was launched in November 2013 and so far has been downloaded more than 10,000 times in that country.

The experience has been so successful it has continued moving through Latin America. Colombia, where every 14 minutes a woman is attacked by her partner, was the first country to adopt this tool to geotag public information in the streets of Bogota.

After this city has continued to experience moving to other countries to achieve make cities safer for women counting on your collaboration and experience places. This application registers information related to citizen safety rates experienced by users and evaluating the most dangerous areas and thus working for the right of women to freely walk the streets without fear for their safety.

Safetipin closely encourages the cooperation of the citizens with their governments providing real time information to all sectors interested in improving this situation as tourism-related entrepreneurs, traders or governments own time. In Bogotá this application was part of a project of the Secretariat for Women , specifically in districts protection of women victims of violence (SOFIA) to provide greater protection for women in the Colombian capital.

Kalpana Viswanath ( @ SafetipinApp ), researcher and activist in the field of urban security and gender, co-founder of the tool, pointing at El Espectador its intention to develop the app in 10 other Indian cities. The information collected is delivered to the police, they work closely together to "increase security in areas requiring priority attention and better lighting." This tool uses 8 categories ranging from inappropriate comments to groping and indecent exposure, conditions that disproportionately affect women.

The operation of the tool is simple because users only have to submit reports assessing the places you have lived a situation of harassment, thus avoiding certain areas considered dangerous. This content is poured into a geographic information map to visualize quickly the safest areas of the city...Article source.

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