STOCKHOLM/ NEW DELHI: For Indian participants at the global road safety summit in Stockholm, it was nothing less than a cultural shock when Swedish King , Carl XVI Gustaf, announced that 16 children died in road crashes in his country last year and “16 was not zero”. Even as India reported 9,977 fatalities of persons below 18 years in 2018, which translates to 27 persons in this age group dying daily in road accidents, it has hardly got enough attention of government agencies.Indian delegation at the 3rd Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety included Union road transport minister Nitin Gadkari , senior officials from transport and health ministries besides representatives from organisations working in this sector. Gustaf said 50 years ago, in 1970, more than 200 Swedish children lost their lives in road traffic accidents and that number is now down to 16. “Of course, 16 is still not zero, but it is a lot better than 200,” he said.“This shows their commitment and how they take every single road death seriously. We need to learn from them and take quick measures to reduce road fatalities. Like many other countries, we also failed to meet the target set for 2020. Now after the fresh commitment to halve our road deaths in the next 10 years we can’t miss another target,” said Rama Shankar Pandey , president of Club Drive Smart Drive Safe, who attended the global summit in the Swedish capital.Gadkari also admitted it was huge challenge for India to reduce road fatalities considering that 11% of all deaths in road accidents are reported from India. “It’s a matter of huge concern that we continue to be leading all countries so far as road deaths are concerned. I am confident that strict implementation of the amended provisions of Motor Vehicle Act will result in reduction of fatalities. We need to fix the faulty road designs. Countries which have reduced road deaths have focussed primarily on two areas - road engineering and enforcement - and we need to address these issues rather than simply blaming the drivers,” the minister told TOI.Leaders from 140 countries have unanimously adopted to reduce the road fatalities by 50% by 2030 and deal with “speeding”, which continues to be the main reason of increasing number of road fatalities across countries. According to the Stockholm Declaration, countries will strengthen enforcement to prevent speeding and “mandate a maximum road travel speed at 30 kmph where vulnerable road users and vehicles mix in frequent and planned manner.” It said the authorities can increase the speed limit only in areas where “strong evidence exists that higher speed is safe”.Road safety activists who participated in the global summit said India can learn from Sweden, which has set high standard and from Russia where road fatalities reduced by 50% between 2010 and 2020 despite three-fold increase in the number of vehicles. Russian internal affairs minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev said they first created a single window to collect all road accidents and fatalities data including from police, hospitals and insurance firms and focussed on enforcement to reduce the fatalities.The Russian minister said the total road fatalities was close to 16,900 in 2019 as compared to 29,000 in 2011. “We improved our performance against the target of reducing fatalities to 19,000 during these nine years,” Kolokoltsev said.With the support from World Bank , the Central government is now rolling out a new methodology of collecting road accident data from the spot to get correct and up-to-date information from the accident sites. “But what we need is to collate the data from insurance companies, hospitals and police to get the exact figures and zero down on the reasons of fatal accidents. That will help us to chalk out the strategy to reduce road accidents and fatalities,” said Harpreet Singh , president of Avoid Accident who also participated in the Stockholm meet.