Ill-planned motorization kills one person every six minutes on India's roads

Ill-planned motorization kills one person every six minutes on India's

The union ministry of shipping, road transport and highway's figures show road accidents in 1999-2000 cost India about 3 per cent of its gdp

From 1970-2005, registered motor vehicles increased 50 times but road networks grew less than three times. Accidents increased fourfold; injuries and fatalities also shot up more than six times. Severity of accidents--persons killed per 100 accidents--increased due to Lack of footpaths, cycle tracks and traffic measures to check speed where motorized merges with non-motorized traffic

In 2005, there were 439,255 road accidents-1,205 accidents daily-which killed about 95,000 people; injuring more than 465,282

Expressways to another world National and state highways account for 5.8 per cent of the total road length but account for 50 per cent of the total accidents. Other roads, with 94.2 per cent of the total road length, witnessed 46.8 per cent of the total accidents

National highways allow greater speed but lack speed control measures. In 2005,they witnessed for 29.6 per cent of the total accidents and 37.3 per cent of the people killed while state highways saw 23.6 per cent of total accidents

As a consequence, rural areas saw more accidents-50.8 per cent of total accidents-and fatalities-60 per cent of total deaths

About 19 per cent of the total road accidents were in 22 cities that had about 30 per cent of the total registered vehicles and only 10 per cent of the country's population. These cities shared about 9 per cent of the people killed and about 12 per cent of the injured

Capital vehicle haven, road safety hell Delhi recorded the highest number of accident deaths (1,862), followed by Bangalore (835), Mumbai (654), Kanpur (515), Chennai (493) and Kolkata (484)

Mumbai recorded the highest number of accidents about 30,000; only 2 per cent were fatal. Delhi had only 9,000 accidents but 18 per cent were fatal

Among the states, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Maharastra shared around 32 per cent of the vehicles registered in 2004. They witnessed 37 per cent of all road accidents that year

Kerala, which had a 4 per cent share in the number of vehicles registered in 2004, had the highest share in total road accidents-9.6 per cent. In 2005, Uttarakhand had the highest rate of accident deaths-60 deaths per 100 accidents, which was almost thrice the national average of about 22 per 100

Bulk transport vehicles (buses, trucks) make up 7.5 per cent of all registered vehicles and caused 30 per cent of the accidents; about 38 per cent of deaths

Source Road accidents in India 2005, MoSRTH, Delhi

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