In a major respite, the Centre on Thursday reported there has been a sharp decline in the road accidents parameters in the years 2020 when compared to years 2019. The Ministry of Road Transport & Highways (MoRTH) informed that over the previous year’s average, total road accidents decreased on an average by 18.46 per cent, whereas the number of persons killed too decreased by 12.84 percent and the number of injuries decreased by 22.84 percent.
According to the report ‘Road accidents in India — 2020’, prepared by the Transport Research Wing (TRW) of the MoRTH, the number of road accidents has been on a decline since 2016 except for a marginal increase of 0.46 percent in 2018. For the second consecutive year, the total number of road accident fatalities has declined in 2020. Similarly, the number of persons injured has been on the decline since 2015.
“A total of 3,66,138 road accidents have been reported by States and Union Territories (UTs) during the calendar year 2020, which claimed 1,31,714 lives and caused 3, 48,279 injuries,” said a Press statement by MoRTH.
As per the report, there has also been a decline in the number of fatal accidents, i.e., accidents involving at least one death. A total of 1, 20,806 fatal accidents were reported in 2020, which is 12.23 percent lower than the 2019 figure of 1, 37,689. Interestingly, during 2020, National Highways, State Highways and Other Roads reported a smaller number of accidents, fatalities, and injuries as compared to the previous year.
"For the third consecutive year in 2020, the fatal road accident victims largely constitute young people in the productive age groups. Young adults in the age group of 18 - 45 years accounted for 69 percent of victims during 2020. People in the working age group of 18 – 60 years share 87.4 percent of total road accident fatalities," said the official release.
The Major States that achieved a significant reduction in road accidents in 2020 are Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Karnataka. And the major States that achieved a significant reduction in road accident fatalities in 2020 are Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Andhra Pradesh.
“The overall reduction in road crash deaths is driven by the decline in road crash deaths during the months of April and May, which overlapped with the period when the country was under CoVID-19 induced lockdown. During 2020, many states notified provisions of the Motor Vehicles Amendment Act, and some marginal decrease in the first quarter of 2020 can be attributed to that. However, it's too early to say if the implementation of the legislation has led to a decline in road crash deaths in 2020. Perhaps 2021 data shall provide more insights into the effectiveness of the implementation of the legislation, if at all,” said Piyush Tewari, Founder and CEO, SaveLIFE Foundation, that has associated itself with the MoRTH and other road stakeholders to do conduct studies and research on road accidents and preventive measures.
