Congress MP Karti Chidambaram raised the alarmingly high incidence of deaths in road accidents across India annually. He said over 1,72,000 deaths occurred in 2023, which is 471 deaths every day. Karti brought the issue up after the recent incident of a head-on collision that claimed 12 lives, involving government buses, on November 30 in Tamil Nadu’s Sivaganga district. Another ghastly incident in Telangana took 19 lives, including a three-month-old girl, when a lorry rammed into a government bus near Chevella on November 3.
Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari informed the Parliament that accident fatalities rose by 2.3% to over 1.77 lakh in 2024. He also said, according to World Road Statistics 2024, the fatality rate per lakh population is 4.3 in China, 12.76 in the United States of America, and 11.89 in India. Karti highlighted one of the main reasons, apart from overspeeding and poor infrastructure, as unskilled drivers. He urged strengthening the current licensing system and checking for substance abuse among drivers.