A study of just how walkable Bengaluru roads are showed that pedestrians are at high risk of road accidents.

Poor footpaths cause 30 per cent of road fatalities in Bengaluru, and 60 per cent of those dead and injured in accidents on National Highways are pedestrians. The survey also pointed out that a majority of residential areas do not have pavements or else they are occupied by parked cars.

The survey provides a qualitative analysis of walking conditions including safety, security and convenience of travelling by foot on Bengaluru roads. The walkability survey assessed the pedestrian friendliness in three zones -- the commercial zone (Majestic and Shanthinagar), residential zone (Basaveshwara Nagar and Chamarajpet) and shopping zone (Jaynagar shopping complex, MG Road and Brigade Road).

“The city planners and authorities are spending crores of rupees in providing wider roads, good road surface characteristics, good road geometrics and better quality of vehicles, but still they are not able to reduce the accidents in the city. Instead of that, if they just provide adequate and level footpaths, we can reduce nearly 40 per cent of the accidents,” said Rohit B. E., a faculty member of East West Institute of Technology, who was involved in the survey.