NCRPB Highway Safety Plan Proposes Mandatory Service Lanes, Trauma Care, Heli-Ambulances in NCR

The National Capital Region Planning Board has proposed mandatory service lanes along highways, dedicated accident recovery lanes, trauma centres, and heli-ambulance infrastructure across the NCR, sharpening its focus on road safety and emergency response on high-speed corridors. The proposal is aimed at reducing fatalities and improving the speed with which emergency teams can handle accident victims and disabled vehicles after crashes. 

The move is significant for the automotive and transport ecosystem because it treats road safety as a design and systems issue, not merely an enforcement problem. NCR’s highways carry a complex mix of private cars, bikes, buses and commercial vehicles, handling inter-city traffic as well as local access movement. On such corridors, the absence of properly planned service lanes can force slow-moving or local traffic to merge with faster through traffic, increasing conflict points and crash risk.

The proposed accident recovery lanes are equally important. Secondary crashes after an initial collision, stalled vehicle, or breakdown remain a major safety concern on busy highways. A dedicated recovery lane, supported by cranes, tow vehicles and rapid-response teams, can help clear incidents faster while keeping emergency operations away from live traffic. This would be particularly relevant for freight operators, taxi fleets, inter-city buses, and private vehicle users on NCR’s expanding expressway network.

The trauma-care component links highway planning with post-crash survival. NCRPB’s Draft Regional Plan 2041 had earlier recommended trauma centres on national highways, state highways, and expressways at intervals of about 50–60 km or within the “golden hour”, with facilities such as blood banks, diagnostics, and air-ambulance support. It also envisaged helipads or airstrips on expressways at about every 100 km and highway facility centres at 50–60 km intervals. 

The latest proposal comes against a difficult national road safety backdrop. India’s 2024 road accidents report recorded 4.87 lakh road accidents and 1.77 lakh fatalities, with national highways accounting for 64,772 deaths despite representing a small share of the overall road network. Bike users and pedestrians together formed more than two-thirds of road deaths, underlining the challenge of mixed traffic on high-speed infrastructure. 

For the NCR, implementation will be the real test. Highway assets are spread across multiple agencies and states, while emergency response depends on police, health departments, concessionaires, ambulance networks and local administrations working in sync. Land availability for service lanes, funding for trauma facilities, and operating protocols for heli-ambulances will also need clarity.

Even so, the direction is clear. As NCR adds wider roads, expressways and logistics corridors, safety infrastructure will have to keep pace with capacity expansion. The proposal signals that future highway planning in the region may be judged not only by travel-time savings, but also by how quickly it can prevent, manage and survive crashes.