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Road crashes deserve to be a strategic issue for any country's public health and can lead to overall growth crisis, if not addressed properly. More than 90% of deaths on the world's roads occur in low and middle-income countries (21.5 and 19.5 per lakh of population, respectively) though they have just 48% of all registered vehicles. It is estimated that road traffic deaths will increase worldwide, from 0.99 million in 1990 to 2.34 million in 2020 (representing 3.4% of all deaths). India already accounts for about 9.5% of the total 1.2 million fatal accidents in the world. In 2007, 1.14 lakh people in India lost their lives in road mishaps-that's significantly higher than the 2006 road death figures in China, 89,455. One person dies at every 4.61 minutes in India for road crashes. Road deaths in India registered a sharp 6.1% rise between 2006 and 2007. The Planning Commission of India had assessed the social cost at 55,000 crore ( 550 billion) on account of road accidents in India.

Road safety is becoming a strategic issue for sustainable development of India. Increasing vehicle population and low road density (India has 2.56 km road/thousand population and 768 km road/thousand km2 of total land.) are aggravating the problem. Introduction of modern safety features in small cars are inevitable to improve the safety scenario. Recently Anti-lock Braking System (ABS) has been started to be introduced in low segment family cars. But still the effect of ABS, fitted on these cars, in reducing the road accident are debatable and in-depth studies are required in this field. A thorough investigation of usefulness of ABS on Indian road condition took place in this paper. An instrumented vehicle has been used to study the braking performance of a small family vehicle with ABS ON and OFF condition on two different types of road surfaces, namely dry and wet. In addition to the vehicle performance the focus has been given to the vehicle stability criteria.

Road traffic crashes kill 1.2 million people each year and injure 50 million worldwide. Nearly 8.5% of total fatal accidents per year takes place in India. This issue is creating a huge socio-economic toll globally. Various studies revealed that the total number of people killed in road crashes in regions of the third world countries continued to increase, whereas in the developed nations there has been a steady decrease for the last two decades. This paper aims to critically discuss the road accidents in view of the cause, effect and mitigation means with special emphasis on some technical interventions in the vehicles. Exhaustive review of weather and wet road related crashes have also been carried out as part of the study. Authors commented on the global estimation of the socio-economic impact of road crashes.

Fuel consumption continues to be a major concern through out the tractor industry despite efforts to minimize it. Gear-Up-Throttle-Down (GUTD) technique to match the load during field operation with tractor is a well known practice for better fuel economy. But proper application of GUTD principle demands a good amount of experience from the operator to sense the minimum specific fuel consumption (sfc) zone for particular load and to select proper gear accordingly to maintain high work rate. Again trend for shifting to higher horse power segment by farmers of some developing countries like India without replacing the implements suitable for their small horse power tractor is a source of high fuel consumption due to implement-tractor mismatch. In this paper, design, development and dynamometer testing of a Digital Throttle Gear Optimizer (DTGO), which can act as a GUTD guidance system, have been discussed. Microcontroller, inductive type proximity sensors etc. were used to develop DTGO.