Difficult for movies to do away with stunt scenes: Shah Rukh Khan

Difficult for movies to do away with stunt scenes: Shah Rukh Khan

NEW DELHI: Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan promised to do what he could to try and make India's deadly roads safer, but said it would be difficult for movies to do away with action sequences that contain stunt scenes. "You have a car scene and they say you can't blow a car... You can't be that autocratic with an entertainer. With arts, you need to be liberal," Khan said.

Roads secretary Vijay Chhibber had suggested that Khan and his colleagues needed to be careful about enacting car and bike action scenes as youngsters try to emulate them in real life and end up hurting themselves. They were attending a road safety event on Monday organised by Hyundai Motors, for which Khan is brand ambassador.

"Mr Brand Ambassador should also sensitise his colleagues in the industry to be responsible when it comes to roads safety," Chhibber said. The increasing number of road deaths in the country erodes GDP by 3% every year, according to the government.

The economic loss amounts toRs 55,000 crore annually with 1.5 lakh people killed in road crashes every year. Highways minister Nitin Gadkari said his ministry was working on a plan to reduce the number of road deaths. The plan includes stringent safety norms and identifying accident spots across the country. "India has the highest number of road fatalities in the world, with one person being killed in a road mishap every four minutes," Gadkari said. His ministry is also working on a proposal to impose penalties on companies and engineers responsible for bad road design.

The provisions will be included in the upcoming road safety bill. Mainstream cinema may not be the best vehicle for advocating better road sense, the actor said. "If you have a character like Don, he won't give you lectures on road safety," Khan joked, referring to a gangster he's played. "I will sit down with Mr Chibber's team and see what we can do to spread the message." Khan's upcoming movie Dilwale has highoctane action scenes. "But we do wear a helmet during bike scenes. Even Tom Cruise does it in Mission Impossible," Khan said.

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