On November 19, 2019, As per the report ‘Road Accidents in India, 2018’released by Ministry of Road Transport and Highways based on information provided by the Police Departments of States and UTs(Union Territories), the number of road accidents has increased by 0.46% with 4,67,044 in the year 2018 as compared to 4.64 lakh in 2017.
The death rate during the road accident has also increased by 2.37 % to more than 1,51,471 people in 2018 as against 1.47 lakh fatalities in 2017. This translates into 53 crashes and the loss of 17 lives every hour in 2018.
Key Points:
i. Highest number of deaths: Uttar Pradesh (UP) ranked the highest position in terms of deaths due to road accidents. In 2018, 22,256 people lost their lives in the state where 42,568 road accidents were reported.It is followed by Maharashtra ,where 13,261 people lost their lives due to road accidents in 2018.
ii.Highest number of accidents: Tamil Nadu recorded the highest number of road accidents in 2018 with 63,920 incidents. 12,216 people lost their lives in the state due to these.
iii.Reason: Over-speeding is a major killer for maximum road accident fatalities, accounting for 64.4% of the persons killed.It was followed by non-wearing of helmets (28.8%) b, Non-wearing of seat belts (16.14% ) & driving on the wrong side of the road, which accounted for 5.8% of the accident related deaths.
iv.Report : As per the report by 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.It’s followed by China (63,000 deaths) and the United States (37,000 deaths).
v. Motor Vehicle Amendment Bill 2019: The central government has approved Motor Vehicle Amendment Bill 2019. The Act regarding this bill suggests the centre to establish a Motor Vehicle Accident Fund to provide minimum compensation to road accident victims.
About Road transport ministry:
Founded– July 1942
Headquarters– New Delhi
Union Minister -Nitin Gadkari
