Why can’t we control road accidents in India?

Dr S Vasantha Kumar from VIT tells us how road accidents in the country can be averted if we take the necessary precautions
Why can’t we control road accidents in India?

Worldwide, about 1.25 million persons are killed in road traffic accidents every year, which means that on an average, 3,400 people are  killed daily on the roads. Almost half of all global road traffic deaths occur among young adults between 15 and 44 years of age and 73% of all global road traffic fatalities are males. In India, one road accident is reported every minute and at least one death every 4 minutes due to road accidents, which is among the highest in the world.

According to the statistics released by the National Crime Records Bureau, a total of 4,64,674 road accidents were reported in India in 2015, an increment of 3.1% when compared to 2014. The fatalities in road accidents also showed an increasing trend from 1,41,526 in 2014 to 1,48,707 in 2015 (an increment of 5.1%). Tamil Nadu tops the list in India in road accidents with 69,059 accidents reported in 2015. Following Tamil Nadu, Karnataka reported a high number of accidents (44,011), followed by Maharashtra (42,250) and Madhya Pradesh (40,859). An analysis of accident causes revealed that most of the road accidents in India were due to over-speeding (2,02,882 accidents out of 4,64,474). In terms of deaths due to over speeding, Tamil Nadu tops the country with 9,380 deaths out of 60,969 deaths reported in 2015.

Rash driving of private buses in order to stay on schedule may lead to accidents. In order to adhere to the schedule time, the private buses travel at very high speeds and whenever there is a delay along the route, they make up for it by increasing their speed on the highway and this action may lead to accidents. Hence, the Traffic Police and Highways Department should ensure the provision of proper speed control measures such as traffic signs indicating the permitted speed limit or provision of speed breakers at identified hot spots in these routes in order to reduce chance of over-speeding and avoid accidents. If speed controllers are installed in private buses, accidents can be avoided.

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