Road accidents claimed over 1.5 lakh lives in 2018, over-speeding major killer

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.

Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh remain accounted for the highest number of road accidents and death on account of road accidents respectively in 2018, the report revealed.

For three consecutive years now, young adults in the age group of 18 - 45 years accounted for nearly 69.6 percent of road accident victims.

The working age group of 18 – 60 accounted for a share of 84.7 percent in the total road accident deaths.

Traffic violations related to driving on the wrong side of the road accounted for 5.8% of the accident related deaths. Use of mobile phones accounted for 2.4% of the deaths with drunken driving accounting for 2.8% of the persons killed.