India experiences 79 per cent rise in road accident deaths due to red-light jumping in 2020
Road accidents in India
India saw a sharp 79 per cent rise in road accident deaths due to red-light jumping in the year 2020 compared to 2019, a latest report said.
However, the number of total road accidents and the fatalities declined by 18 percent and 12.8 percent, respectively, in 2020.
Indian Ministry of Road Transport and Highways' report 'Road Accidents in India - 2020' revealed that a total of 3,66,138 road accidents were reported across the country in the calendar year 2020, which claimed 1,31,714 lives and caused 3, 48,279 injuries.
Out of the total road accidents in 2020, 919 were caused by jumping of traffic signal which killed 476 people, which is a significant increase from 2019, when 266 people died due to red light jumping.
Apart from red-light jumping, another category which saw a rise in fatalities was driving on the wrong side of the road.
As many as 3,099 people died in accidents due to driving on wrong side of the road in 2020 compared to 2,726 deaths in 2019.
However, the top cause of road accidents remained over speeding which led to over one lakh road accidents in 2020.
According to the report, the highest decline, of 21 percent, was recorded in fatalities due to drunken driving in 2020 with 1862 deaths compared to 2376 deaths in 2019.
The report cited COVID-19 lockdown as one of the reasons for the decline in the number of accidents and fatalities during 2020 compared to 2019.
Other factors attributed by the Indian government to the reduced number were better traffic management and implementation of the new Motor Vehicle Act.
At least one out of 10 people killed on roads across the world is from India, according to the World Health Organization and though the Indian government's report says the number has declined, it is still huge and accounts for world's 11 percent road accident fatalities.
The report said that young adults in the age group of 18 - 45 years accounted for 69 per cent of fatal road accident victims during 2020 while people in the working age group of 18 – 60 years share 87.4 per cent of total road accident fatalities.
It said that the number of road accidents has been on a decline since 2016 except for a marginal increase of 0.46 per cent in 2018.
"For the second consecutive year, the total number of road accidents fatalities has declined in 2020.
Similarly, the number of persons injured has been on the decline since 2015," it said.
The number of persons injured decreased by 22.84 per cent over previous year’s average, said the report, which provides information on various facets of road accidents in the country during the calendar year 2020.
As per the report, Indian states which achieved significant reduction in road accidents in 2020 were Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka.
And the states that saw a significant decline in road accident fatalities in 2020 were Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh.
Fatalities and injuries caused by road accidents are becoming the matters of great concern particularly with the recent surge in motorization, due to increasing population and increased vehicular penetration across the length and breadth of India.
In a bid to reduce the number of road accidents and fatalities, the Indian government is now planning to use artificial intelligence powered solutions to alert drivers and avoid collisions on roads.
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