Right to Walk: A Welcome Supreme Court Decision and a Management Perspective on Pedestrian Safety

Alok Raj

The Supreme Court, on Friday, June 19, 2026, declared that the freedom to walk on demarcated and well-maintained footpaths is a fundamental right and that this right has priority over the movement of motorised vehicles. This is a welcome decision because it highlights a simple but often neglected principle: roads are not only for vehicles; they are also for people. For a management and operations management scholar, this judgment is not merely a legal development. It is a reminder that urban mobility is a system, and any system that ignores one of its most vulnerable users is poorly designed. Pedestrians are the most basic users of public roads. Every citizen becomes a pedestrian at some point—while going to school, office, market, bus stop, railway station, hospital, or home. Therefore, the right to walk safely must be treated as a core element of urban planning and public-service delivery.

The seriousness of the issue is visible from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways’ Road Accidents in India 2024 report. Pedestrian deaths increased from 35,221 in 2023 to 36,526 in 2024, a rise of 3.7%. Pedestrians accounted for 20.6% of total road-accident deaths in 2024, compared with 20.4% in 2023. This means that more than one in every five road-accident deaths in India is a pedestrian. The data also show that on National Highways, pedestrian accidents decreased marginally from 19,992 in 2023 to 19,498 in 2024, but pedestrian deaths increased from 11,180 to 11,386. This is an important warning: fewer reported accidents do not necessarily mean safer roads if the severity of accidents is increasing. The 2024 data also reveal the vulnerability of pedestrians across gender and age groups. A total of 29,055 male pedestrians and 7,471 female pedestrians were killed in road accidents in 2024. Male pedestrians accounted for 79.5% and female pedestrians for 20.5% of pedestrian deaths. The age profile shows that the highest number of pedestrian deaths occurred in the economically active and elderly age groups. The 45–60 age group recorded 8,436 pedestrian deaths, followed by the 35–45 age group with 7,636 deaths and the 25–35 age group with 7,281 deaths. Even children and young adults are not spared: 1,888 pedestrians below 18 years and 4,333 pedestrians aged 18–25 years were killed in 2024.

The type of impacting vehicle also provides useful managerial insight. In 2024, pedestrians were killed in crashes involving two-wheelers, cars, trucks, buses, auto-rickshaws, bicycles, and other vehicles. Two-wheelers were associated with 10,378 pedestrian deaths, while cars, taxis, vans and light motor vehicles were associated with 9,302 pedestrian deaths. Trucks and lorries accounted for 5,165 pedestrian deaths, and buses for 2,257 deaths. These figures show that pedestrian safety cannot be addressed only through one type of regulation. It requires integrated management of speed, road design, vehicle behaviour, enforcement, and pedestrian infrastructure. This judgment also has a strong public-health dimension. Walking is the simplest and most inclusive form of physical activity. It helps reduce risks related to obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stress, and sedentary lifestyles. Safe footpaths therefore act as preventive health infrastructure. In a country where lifestyle diseases are rising, walkable cities can reduce pressure on the healthcare system while improving quality of life. A footpath is not only a civil-engineering asset; it is also a public-health investment.

There is also an energy and sustainability argument. Many short-distance trips in Indian cities are made by two-wheelers or cars because walking is unsafe, inconvenient, or unpleasant. If citizens can safely walk for short trips of 500 metres to 2 kilometres, India can reduce fuel consumption, congestion, emissions, and local air pollution. Even small reductions in motorised short-distance trips can create large cumulative benefits because such trips are repeated daily by millions of people. From an operations perspective, this is a high-impact intervention: a low-cost infrastructure improvement can generate benefits in safety, health, environment, and productivity.

Japan provides useful lessons for India. Japan has systematically invested in safe walking spaces, barrier-free pedestrian infrastructure, school-zone safety, traffic calming, and removal of obstacles such as utility poles from pedestrian areas. Japanese cities often treat walking infrastructure as part of an integrated urban mobility system. The lesson for India is not to copy Japan blindly, but to adopt the same management philosophy: pedestrian safety must be planned, measured, maintained, and continuously improved.

The Supreme Court decision should now be converted into operational action.

• First, cities must invest in continuous, obstruction-free, well-lit, and accessible footpaths. Footpaths should not disappear suddenly, be blocked by parked vehicles, or be occupied by permanent encroachments.
• Second, safe pedestrian crossings must be provided near schools, hospitals, bus stops, markets, railway stations, metro stations, and residential areas.
• Third, traffic-calming measures such as speed breakers, raised crossings, rumble strips, pedestrian refuge islands, and lower speed limits should be introduced in high-pedestrian zones.
• Fourth, special attention must be given to vulnerable pedestrians: children, elderly people, persons with disabilities, and low-income workers who depend heavily on walking and public transport. Ramps, tactile paving, audible pedestrian signals, adequate crossing time at signals, and barrier-free sidewalks should be treated as essential design features, not optional additions.
• Fifth, India must move towards data-driven pedestrian safety management. Accident-prone zones should be identified through systematic analysis of crash data, pedestrian volume, vehicle speed, road geometry, lighting conditions, land use, school and market locations, and hospital injury data. This can be similar to blackspot identification, but with a sharper focus on pedestrian-risk zones. Cities should create a Pedestrian Risk Index for each road segment. This index can include previous accidents, fatality severity, traffic speed, absence of footpaths, crossing availability, street-lighting quality, encroachment level, and density of vulnerable users. Artificial intelligence can play an important role here. AI-based video analytics can identify near-miss incidents between pedestrians and vehicles before they become fatal accidents. GIS dashboards can map pedestrian hotspots. Machine-learning models can predict which locations are likely to become high-risk zones. Automated cameras can detect speeding, wrong-side driving, parking on footpaths, and signal violations. Such technology should not be used merely for collecting fines; it should be used for prevention, planning, and better allocation of municipal resources.

The Motor Vehicles Act and related rules also need stronger pedestrian-oriented provisions. The current traffic-governance system often focuses on vehicles, licensing, insurance, penalties, and compensation after accidents. Going forward, pedestrian safety should be explicitly incorporated into enforcement and accountability. Parking or driving on footpaths should attract strict penalties. Speed limits in pedestrian-heavy areas should be clearly defined and enforced. Road-owning agencies should be made accountable for unsafe or missing footpaths. Mandatory pedestrian-safety audits should be introduced for urban roads, National Highways passing through settlements, and roads near schools and hospitals.

The Planning Commission’s earlier research estimated that road collisions caused an annual monetary loss of about $10 billion in India during 1999–2000, while the International Road Federation later estimated the annual loss at about $20 billion. These costs include medical expenses, productivity loss, property damage, and administrative costs. Therefore, pedestrian safety is not only a moral and constitutional issue; it is also an economic issue. Preventing pedestrian deaths and injuries saves families, firms, hospitals, courts, insurers, and governments from avoidable costs. The Supreme Court has given India an opportunity to rethink road governance. The traditional view that road capacity means faster vehicle movement is incomplete. A better view is that roads must safely move people, not merely vehicles. A road with high vehicle speed but high pedestrian risk is not an efficient road; it is a poorly managed system. The way forward requires coordinated action by the Union government, state governments, municipal corporations, traffic police, urban planners, road engineers, technology providers, and citizens. Infrastructure development, speed management, enforcement, public awareness, drink-driving control, and community engagement must work together. Public campaigns should educate both motorists and pedestrians about responsible behaviour, safe crossings, avoiding mobile-phone distraction while walking, and respecting pedestrian priority. What gets measured gets managed. Therefore, municipalities should be evaluated not only on road length constructed, but also on walkability, footpath continuity, pedestrian fatality reduction, accessibility for persons with disabilities, school-zone safety, and citizen satisfaction. Pedestrian safety indicators should become part of urban governance dashboards.

Recognising the right to walk is the first step. Building and protecting that right is the real management challenge. If implemented seriously, this Supreme Court decision can become a turning point in India’s movement towards safer, healthier, more inclusive, and more humane cities.

(Alok Raj is Associate Professor, XLRI Jamshedpur. Views are personal)