Death By The Road

In News

17 people die on the road due to accidents every hour in the country, according to the annual report on road accidents by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways.

In-Detail

The annual report released by the Ministry of Road Transport shows that 1.5 lakh people lost their lives in 2018 due to road crashes.
This is an increase of 2.4% compared to 2017 where 1.47 lakh people lost their lives.
On average, daily, 1,280 road accidents and 415 deaths occurred in 2018.
This means 53 crashes and 17 lives lost every hour in the country.
In 2018, road traffic injuries constitute the eighth leading cause of death in the country.
As per the Geneva-based World Road Federation’s World Road Statistics 2018, India is the most unsafe country in the world for road users across 199 countries.
India is followed by China with 63,000 deaths and the U.S with 37,000 deaths.
According to the report, 48% of the road crash deaths in 2018 involved people in the age group of 18-35 years. Minors were involved in 6.6% of the road accident deaths.

Reasons

While over-speeding accounted for 64.4% of the deaths, not following rules by driving on the wrong side accounted for 5.8% of the deaths.
Drunken driving accounted for 2.8% and use of mobile phones accounted for 2.4% of the deaths.
As per the report, not wearing helmets led to 43,614 deaths or 28.8% of total road accident deaths in 2018.
Similarly, not-wearing seatbelt led to 24,435 people losing their lives in a road accident.
Among states, Tamil Nadu with 13.7% of topped the country in the number of road accident deaths, followed by Madhya Pradesh – 11% and Uttar Pradesh – 9.1%.

Experts View

Experts are of the view that high road fatalities are seen in states that have opposed the implementation of the Motor Vehicles Amendment Act.
They urge these state governments to implement the safety provisions of the Motor Vehicles Amendment Act, 2019.