India’s poor road safety sees increasing deaths

June 14, 2016 Read time: 2 mins

Official statistics from India paint a poor picture for road safety, with road deaths increasing. During 2015 there were around 146,000 reported deaths from road crashes in the country, an average of 400/day and an increase of 5% from the previous year. Road crashes increased by 2.5% to around 501,000 in 2015. The actual casualty figure for India may be significantly higher however as many road deaths go unreported.

Capital Delhi saw 1,622 road deaths during 2015 the greatest number for any city, although Mumbai suffered from more road crashes, with 23,468. The states of Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu were the most dangerous for road crashes. Kerala has figured highly in India’s road crash rate for many years with its narrow and twisty mountain roads seeing a particularly high proportion of fatal incidents.

Of concern is that people aged 15-34 accounted for 54.1% of those killed in road crashes. Driver error was a major cause of 77.1% of the crashes, with speeding being one of the prime problems.

India’s poor road safety requires improvement

The Indian Government has revealed that 146,133 people died in crashes on the country’s roads during 2015. This figure is of concern as it is an increase of 4.6% over India’s road fatality rate of 139,671 for the previous year. Also of concern is the fact that over half of the people who died in crashes were aged from 15-34, revealing that there is a particularly high risk for the young on India’s roads. The data also shows that there were 501,423 reported crashes on India’s road network in 2015, an increas

December 13, 2016

Poor road safety causes too many deaths