Nearly 200 migrant workers lost their lives in road accidents in the country during the two-and-a-half months of COVID-19 lockdown. Uttar Pradesh reported the highest number of victims at 94 followed by 38 road fatalities in Madhya Pradesh and 16 in Bihar.
While Telangana reported 11 deaths, Maharashtra reported nine migrants losing their lives on road or highways. The migrant workers lost their lives while walking or cycling back home among others.
The 200 migrants’ deaths on roads are part of the total 750 people killed in road crashes across the country between March 25 and May 31, 2020. As many as 1,390 persons were reported injured in the crashes.
The data compiled using media-tracking and multi-source verification by a road safety organisation and submitted to Road Ministry has also listed 1,390 people injured in road crashes.
Even in the total road fatality of lockdown period, Uttar Pradesh accounts for over 30 percent (245) of the total deaths followed by Telangana (56), Madhya Pradesh (56), Bihar (43), Punjab (38) and Maharashtra (36).
Further analysis by Save Life Foundation, a non-profit stakeholders working towards saving lives on roads in India, reveals that around 27 percent of the victims were migrant workers whereas 5 percent were essential workers like Police, doctors, and others. 68 percent of the overall deaths involved pedestrians, two-wheelers and three-wheelers – categorised as Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs).
“One of the recurring reasons for mass casualties in most of the incidents was speeding and driver fatigue due to continuous driving on tenuous routes.
Fatigue among bus and truck drivers hired to transport migrants combined with over speeding and poor engineering of roads top reason for road crash deaths,” explained a senior Road Ministry official.
Founder and CEO of Save Life Foundation, Piyush Tewari, said the data suggests that there has been a surge in road crashes with lifting of the restrictions across the States in Phase III and Phase IV.
Out of the four phases of lockdown, phase IV was the deadliest overall, whereas phase III was the deadliest in particular for migrant workers which reported 60 percent of all migrant deaths in road crashes during lockdown followed by phase IV with 19 percent of total migrant deaths reported in the media.
“It is critical that States enhance enforcement to prevent road crashes and the citizens inculcate essential safety habits for the road like they did for personal hygiene during the lockdown.
There is now an urgent need for design changes to segregate pedestrian traffic from fast moving vehicles" Tewari said.
