The Missing Middle

A state highway connecting two regions carries 15,000 vehicles daily. It passes through villages and populated areas. There is no median barrier. Shoulders are unpaved. There is no street lighting. The posted speed limit is 80 km/h; however, enforcement is limited. In the past five years, 200 fatalities have been recorded on this road.

This road has not been formally assessed for safety attributes. No systematic evaluation of infrastructure deficiencies has been conducted. No targeted interventions have been proposed. The road continues to record fatalities without appearing on road safety priority lists.

This situation reflects a broader pattern in low and middle-income countries: roads that carry the majority of traffic and account for the majority of fatalities remain largely unassessed and unimproved.

Systematic Assessment Gaps

National highways typically receive assessment priority. They are high-profile infrastructure, carry intercity traffic, and often have dedicated management institutions. Many national highway networks have been subject to safety assessments.

State highways present a different situation. These roads are significantly longer than national highway networks and typically managed at state level. Assessment and improvement programs for state highways remain limited. Secondary roads—connecting district centers, rural towns, and villages—are even less systematically studied. Reliable data on secondary road characteristics, traffic patterns, and crash outcomes is often lacking.

The result is that resources naturally flow toward measurable and documented problems. National highways, being assessed, have documented safety deficiencies and can make cases for improvement. State highways and secondary roads, lacking systematic assessment, remain underrepresented in safety improvement programs.

Institutional Factors in Assessment Prioritization

Several institutional factors contribute to the assessment gap for State Highways and secondary roads. First, institutional fragmentation: National Highways are typically managed by a centralized agency, while State Highways are managed by individual state governments, and secondary roads may be managed by district or municipal authorities. This fragmentation makes coordinated assessment and improvement programs difficult.

Second, resource constraints: Road safety assessment programs require significant budgetary allocation. International funding often targets National Highways due to their regional significance. State-level assessments may not receive equivalent funding priority.

Third, data availability: National Highway fatalities, being better documented and more visible, are more readily available for analysis. State Highway and secondary road crash data are frequently incomplete or poorly compiled, making it difficult to establish the case for safety improvements.

These factors create a cycle in which roads with better data and institutional structure receive assessment priority, while roads with worse data collection remain underassessed.

Data Quality and Visibility

Crash reporting quality varies significantly by road category. National Highways typically have higher reporting rates—police systematically record crashes, insurance companies track incidents, and there is accountability pressure. On State Highways and secondary roads, crash reporting is less systematic. A collision may or may not be formally reported. If reported, data entry into safety databases may be inconsistent.

The result is significant undercounting of fatalities on secondary roads. A State Highway that actually experiences 50 crashes annually may be recorded as experiencing 15 crashes in official databases. This creates a fundamental data asymmetry: roads with higher fatality rates but lower reporting rates appear less dangerous than they actually are.

Who Uses State Highways?

Trucks. Buses. Long-distance travel. Intercity commerce. The roads that move goods and people between population centers. The arteries of the economy. And they're almost entirely unassessed for safety.

A truck driver spending 12 hours per day on State Highways has lived through more near-misses than most people experience in a lifetime. The road has poor visibility curves, no median barriers, no shoulder protection. A swerve means hitting oncoming traffic or overturning. But the road is fine—it's designed to standard. Just not a safety standard.

Bus passengers on these routes face substantial, largely unmanaged risk. A bus crash on a state highway with high speeds and no median barrier can be fatal for everyone on board — and such crashes recur without being treated as a systemic problem.

Secondary Road Safety Challenges

Secondary roads present distinct safety challenges. They connect state highways to villages and rural areas, carrying mixed traffic—pedestrians, cycles, animals, slow-moving vehicles, and motorized vehicles all using the same road. This traffic mixing is inherent to rural road function.

A secondary road through agricultural areas, past villages, with commercial activity and school zones, requires different design and speed management than a State Highway. However, secondary roads frequently lack dedicated assessment frameworks, explicit safety standards, or targeted improvement budgets. These roads exist with minimal systematic safety oversight despite carrying significant traffic volumes and vulnerable road users.

Toward Systematic Assessment of All Road Categories

State highways and secondary roads can be assessed using the same methodologies applied to national highways. The technical barriers to assessment are not prohibitive. The barriers are primarily institutional: the need for coordinated assessment programs across multiple administrative jurisdictions, the requirement for sustained funding, and the need to establish accountability for implementation of recommended improvements.

A comprehensive assessment program would include:

• Systematic safety assessment of state highway networks
• Standardized crash data collection protocols across secondary roads
• Coordinated funding mechanisms that span multiple administrative jurisdictions
• Implementation accountability structures

The estimated cost of such programs is substantial but manageable within national road budgets. The potential impact—preventing significant numbers of fatalities through targeted interventions—would justify the investment.

Equity in Road Safety Assessment and Investment

The current concentration of safety assessment and improvement efforts on National Highways, while State Highways and secondary roads remain underassessed, represents a significant equity issue. These less-assessed roads carry a disproportionate share of fatalities yet receive a disproportionately small share of safety investment.

Until assessment and improvement programs are extended systematically to all road categories, road safety improvements will remain concentrated on a small fraction of the road network while the majority—carrying the majority of fatalities—remain unaddressed.