Actress Michelle Yeoh for improved road safety in India

Leh (Ladakh), Oct 6: She zoomed through the streets of Bangkok on a superbike with Pierce Brosn in the James Bond flick “Tomorrow Never Dies”, but Hollywood actress Michelle Yeoh mostly doesn’t feel the need for speed. Road safety is a key element in the UN’s Sustaible Development Goals (SDGs) and India has a key role in their delivery, says the UNDP Goodwill Ambassdor for SDGs. “You have a great amount of infrastructure that is coming up along with many, many new highways. Also, there is great increase in urbanisation. And on your roads it’s many wheels — four wheels, two wheels and then four legs, two legs,” the Malaysian-born Yeoh, who was here for the just-concluded ropa festival at the famed 17th century Hemis mostery, 40 km from here, said in an interview. In this context, she lauded the road signs in Ladakh with messages like “Life is short, but don’t make it shorter” and “Don’t speed and drive”.

The action heroine, who believes Buddhism is a philosophy, said the UNDP is working closely with ministries across the globe. “We are advocating that if we build roads safe now, you don’t have to come back 10 years later to correct the mistakes and after so many lives have been lost. So we have to work very closely with different departments.” After that, educating or generating awareness about road safety is must, she said. “Right now we have all the answers because the developed tions have been working hard on road safety. So we (the developing tions) are lucky; lucky in the sense that they made a lot of mistakes, we can learn from those mistakes.” (IANS)