What Road Accidents Have Done.

 Road accidents in India claimed over 1.5 lakh lives in the country in 2018, with over-speeding of vehicles being the biggest reason for casualties, a government report said.

The ministry of road transport and highways on Tuesday issued a report on Road accidents in India in 2018, which showed that road accidents last year increased by 0.46% as compared to 2017.

“A total of 4,67,044 road accidents have been reported by States and Union Territories (UTs) in the calendar year 2018, claiming 1,51,417 lives and causing injuries to 4,69,418 persons,” the report said. Over-speeding accounted for 64.4% of the persons killed.

Road accident severity measured by the number of persons killed per 100 accidents, has seen an increase of 0.6 percentage points in 2018 over the previous year.

India, ranks 1st in the number of road accident deaths across the 199 countries reported in the World Road Statistics, 2018 followed by China and US. As per the WHO Global Report on Road Safety 2018, India accounts for almost 11% of the accident related deaths in the World.

National Highways which comprise of 1.94 percent of total road network, accounted for 30.2 per cent of total road accidents and 35.7 per cent of deaths in 2018. State Highways which account for 2.97% of the road length accounted for 25.2 percent and 26.8 percent of accidents and deaths respectively.

NEW DELHI: The hospitalisation samples of road crash victims from 54 hospitals across 20 cities show that 34% of them had no income and another 28% had monthly earnings between Rs 10,000 and Rs 20,000.

This data collected during a study to work out the socio-economic cost of road accidents for the road transport ministry has revealed how it’s the poor who are the worst impacted in road crashes.

The data show that barely 3% of the crash victims had monthly earnings of more than Rs 50,000. It was also found that nearly 59% of the accident victims who were hospitalised were twowheeler riders and another 15.5% were pedestrians.

Pedestrians, two-wheeler riders and cyclists are categorised as the most vulnerable road users (VRUs) across the globe considering that they hardly have any protection in case of a crash and hence there is a high chance of these road users getting killed in such incidents.

Sources said about 6,600 samples were collected from 31 government and 21 private hospitals. Nearly 10.7% of the accident victims admitted in hospitals were car, SUV and taxi occupants.

The study conducted by a consortium of TRIPP of IIT (Delhi) and DIMTS also collected 6,400 FIRs spanning over two years from police stations across 14 cities. It found that in 7% cases, the crashes were fatal and in 66% cases the victims were left with grievous injuries.

The analysis of the FIRs also brought to light that nearly 40% victims were twowheeler riders and about 39% victims were pedestrians. The share of car, SUV and taxi occupants was around 8.8%.

The age-wise distribution of data showed that about 67% of the victims were in the age bracket of 18 to 45 years, which is the most productive age group.

The report submitted to the ministry, which is yet to be made public, has concluded that since more than threefourth of the road crash victims are the two-wheeler riders and pedestrians, there is an urgent need to address the vulnerability of these road users by taking measures with regard to improving enforcement, infrastructure and healthcare services.