New Delhi, July 1 -- Every day, 474 Indians and seven Sri Lankans die on their nations' roads. More than 1,300 others are seriously injured in the same twenty-four hours. These numbers are so large and so recurrent that they have ceased to shock. Yet each of those tragedies carries a price tag - paid not in grief alone, but in hospital budgets, lost wages, shattered supply chains and a regional GDP that falls fractionally short of what it could have been.

Multiply those daily losses across a year and the scale of South Asia's road safety crisis becomes impossible to ignore. India loses an estimated USD 150 billion - approximately three per cent of its USD 3.7 trillion economy. Sri Lanka, with a nominal GDP of USD 78 billion, loses a furt...