The epidemic of road deaths

A horrific road death in Delhi is another wake-up call on the need to launch a multi-pronged effort to check the huge number of fatalities on Indian roads

One news that makes it to the headlines in India almost every day are road deaths. In a horrific incident, a girl riding a two-wheeler was hit by a car in Delhi's Sultanpuri area in the early hours of January 1, and her body, which fell to the ground and got stuck in the car's undercarriage, was dragged for several kilometres. While charges of rape and murder have also been raised in this particular case, the men in the car were apparently inebriated, and the police, despite being alerted by an eye-witness, did not come to the spot until after more than an hour.

Though this incident is particularly gruesome, fatal road mishaps have become commonplace in India. Also on New Year's Day, nine persons were killed when an SUV rammed into a bus in Navsari in Gujarat. In fact, India has the highest number of road fatalities in the world — the country witnesses one road death every four minutes, according to a World Bank report.

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To be sure, the commonest causes of road accidents and consequent fatalities in India are the same as they are in the rest of the world. Speeding, drunk driving, careless driving habits, and traffic rule violations top the list of factors that cause road accidents. In India, poor road design and maintenance, low usage of seat belts, and inadequate emergency response mechanisms are also part of the cornucopia of reasons that push road accident casualty figures up.

All these factors are well known. And they are regurgitated each time an important person dies in a road accident, and much hand-wringing and purposeful discussions take place on the steps that need to be taken to contain the shockingly high incidence of road deaths in the country. That is what happened when former Tata Group chairman Cyrus Mistry was killed in a car crash in Maharashtra's Palghar in September last year. That is what happened when Union minister and BJP leader Gopinath Munde died in a road accident in Delhi in 2014. But once the shock and newsworthiness of a famous person perishing in a car crash fades, this burning issue ceases to be, well, a burning issue. Meanwhile, lakhs of nameless people continue to die every year on India's roads.

According to the latest figures released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 1.55 lakh people were killed in road accidents in India in 2021, up 17 per cent from the number of such deaths (1.33 lakh) in 2020. However, much of the country was under lockdown for large parts of the time that year, so the figures for 2020 do not give a realistic picture. In 2019, though, road fatalities claimed 1.54 lakh lives on Indian roads.

Also Read | Delhi's Kanjhawala hit-and-run accident: What we know so far

The World Bank, too, has flagged the stratospheric number of road deaths in the country. "India tops the world in road crash deaths and injuries. It has 1 per cent of the world's vehicles but accounts for 11 per cent of all road crash deaths, witnessing 53 road crashes every hour, killing one person every 4 minutes," it said.

However, despite the enormity of the problem, the government's response to it has been sporadic and knee-jerk at best. And even when good policy decisions are made, there is little effort to implement them on the ground.

Take the decision to get cars to install rear seat belt alarms and make the use of rear seat belts mandatory. It is a well-demonstrated fact that seat belts significantly improve the chances of survival in case of a serious crash. In the accident which killed Mistry and his fellow passenger, both were sitting at the back and neither was wearing a seat belt. The driver and the person seated next to her in the front were belted up, and despite severe injuries, they survived.

In the wake of that accident, in October last year, the Union ministry of road, transport and highways issued draft rules making it mandatory for car makers to install seat belt alarms for all seats. This is a laudable initiative, designed to nudge all passengers, seated at the rear or in the front, to buckle up. However, the rule needs to be backed by strict implementation. Not wearing a seat belt (including for passengers at the back) already attracts a fine of Rs 1,000 under Rule 138 (3) of the Central Motor Vehicle Rules. Yet most people, especially those seated in the rear, simply ignore it.

After the car crash which killed Cyrus Mistry, many states, including Maharashtra, Karnataka and Delhi, said that their traffic police would fine those sitting in the rear without a seat belt. But how many challans have been issued for this violation since then? You, dear reader, have probably flouted the rule each time you have got into the back seat of a car. Have you been fined for it on any occasion?

In 2010, the Centre approved a National Road Safety Policy which contains some excellent provisions such as improving patrolling, robust enforcement of traffic rules, public awareness programmes on road safety practices, making emergency response to accidents, especially on highways, more efficient, and so on. However, more than a decade later, the number of road fatalities have only gone up, which points to a lack of will and determination on the part of the authorities to tackle the problem head on.

Regular and surprise sobriety checkpoints, especially at night, and hefty fines slapped on those who are found to be driving under the influence of alcohol, could be an effective deterrent to drunk driving. Police patrols equipped with speed radar guns, could be a check on over-speeding. CCTV cameras on major roads and highways can record speed violations and fines may be imposed post facto, but they do nothing to stop a vehicle that is rushing like a bat out of hell towards a potential mishap. But for all this to happen, you must first fix the problem of a thinly stretched police force, which struggles perennially with a yawning deficiency in adequate manpower.

Although there is no doubt that the bulk of the accidents on Indian roads takes place due to dangerous driving by four-wheelers, it's the two-wheelers that bear the brunt of the most number of deaths. As per NCRB data, in 2021, two-wheelers accounted for 44.5 per cent of the total deaths on Indian roads. Sure, they are the most vulnerable when it comes to rash driving by bigger vehicles, but it is also true that cyclists and motorbike riders are often the ones who live most dangerously — weaving in and out of narrow spaces, suddenly crossing lanes, jumping lights, overtaking from the left, and so on.

All this makes public awareness campaigns on road safety of utmost importance. If you cannot redesign all roads to have a designated lane for two-wheelers, at least educate them on safe driving protocols on roads where they are dwarfed by vehicles with more power and muscle. The government has the tools to broadcast the message regarding the perils of drunk driving, speeding, driving when you are excessively tired (cricketer Rishabh Pant's car crash last week happened because he had dozed off at the wheel), and so on. Let the messaging be part of a regular public discourse, even as the government takes concrete steps to ensure road safety compliance by all and at every level.

Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari has declared that road accidents and related deaths will be halved by the end of 2024. That's a fine intent. But the government needs to walk the talk and launch a determined, multi-pronged effort to achieve that goal.

(Shuma Raha is a journalist and author)

( Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)