[dZired]

Nitin Gadkari, the Minister of Road Transport & Highways, has released a report named 'Road Accidents in India 2015', which mentions that the last year witnessed over 5 lakh road accidents in the country. These accidents killed a whopping 1.46 lakh people, while more than 4 lakh were left injured.

The said report was compiled by the Transport Research Wing of the Government of India. It further points to an increase of 2.5% in the total number of accidents, as compared to 2014. The increase in percentage is even worse when talking about the number of deaths, as there were 4.6% more deaths recorded than in 2014.

It's not just the number of accidents that are increasing, but their severity too is on the rise. On an average, 28.5 people lost their lives per 100 accidents in 2014, while in 2015, it rose to 29.1 fatalities per 100 mishaps.

To bring things into perspective, 2015 witnessed around 57 road accidents and 17 fatalities every hour.

Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh were the top 3 states in terms of number of road accidents, while the top 13 states (including the above 3 and Karnataka, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and Haryana) cumulatively accounted for 86.7% of the total number of accidents in India.

Mumbai witnessed a total of 23,468 accidents in 2015, which is the highest number recorded across all cities of the country. However, it was Delhi which suffered the maximum number of fatalities (1,622) due to road accidents.

The Minister claimed that the Government is planning to reduce the total number of accidents by 50% by the year 2020. He also spoke about the various measures and steps that the Government is taking in order to enhance road safety and minimize deaths due to accidents. Some of the most important steps include new safety norms for automobiles, improved trauma care facilities and enhancing public awareness + responsibility.



Link to Team-BHP News

[DriverR]

News Article Link

Statistics regarding road accidents in India for 2015 was released yesterday. I tried searching for the original report but was not able to find it. The few stats that was mentioned in the article are quite depressing, as it is indicating that things are getting worse each year. Some of the key facts and figures mentioned in the article are:

- In the last decade, (2005 to 2015) the percentage of road accidents, fatalities and injuries has increased by 14.2 per cent, 53.9 per cent and 7.5 per cent respectively

- Out of over 5 lakhs road accidents, fatalities are 1.46 lakhs annually. This is about 17 deaths per hour

- Delhi tops the fatalities list with 1622 deaths in 2015. Mumbai had the highest number of road accidents in 2015

- 54.1% of fatal accidents involve people in the age group of 15-34 years (It was 34% earlier)

- Tamil Nadu has the highest number of road accidents (state-wise), while Amritsar has the highest accident severity, i.e., number of deaths per 100 accidents.

- In 77.1 per cent cases, the driver was found to be at fault, while speeding was the biggest reason within this category

- Road accidents cause India an estimated 3% of its GDP every year


These statistics are in line with those statistics mentioned in NDTV's Road Safety microsite. (Link)

[i74js]

Is it possible to link

- %age increase in vehicular population and %age increase in accidents?
- %age increase in road network and accident statistics for new roads
- Regions / areas which were able to reduce accidents and causalities and how?

Not this but every government talks about future. Mr. Gadkari is also talking about 2020, which means after the end of this 5 year term of NDA Government. Why can't there be an annual plan which may result in 50% reduction by 2020. Overnight action is not possible.

- Traffic Police in Delhi gets target for Challans (A friend is in Traffic Police); Policemen thus hide after junctions to catch errant drivers instead of managing traffic. Not managing targeted revenue through challans results in internal enquiry as it is considered that the staff might be taking bribe and letting people go.

- Overburden / shortage of staff is another major problem faced in Metros. Most of the traffic police personal work in unhealthy and difficult conditions. Most of the time they have to work beyond working hours

- Poor condition of traffic signals, irregular and delayed maintenance (painting) of Zebra crossing by municipal authorities. Lack of infrastructure for pedestrians.

- Police and municipal authorities (hand in glove) for encroachment of footpaths as well as for irregular parking

- Parking mafia

A lot can be done with existing infrastructure provided present day targets are set instead of future. Case in point - look at the mining sector in India; it was one of most dangerous job until 70's but after the nationalization of mines, the sector has improved and now companies offer one of the safest (inline with global best practices) working environment to miners in India.

It is possible provided there is a cohesive approach by administration backed by political support.

[basubhatta]

My observations:
1. Traffic rules must be implemented stringently. Most of the Indian roads are loosely regulated.
2. Road surface conditions are horrible in many instances.
3. Speed limits are generally not maintained in India. Even the speed limits are not prominently displayed in many instances. Speed limits must be painted on the roads instead of road-side boards.
4. Pedestrians should be also be fined for traffic violation. They should have separate lanes (free from hawkers).
5. Auto/toto/cycle rickshaw/bi-cycle should not be allowed on the main roads and they should have separate lanes.
6. License must be suspended for 1 year if found drunken while driving.
7. Finally, car makers must be forced to introduce safety features. Manufacturers are just taking care of their profit and sales figure. They least bother about our life. Stringent action must be taken against the manufacturers for unsafe cars or if any safety feature malfunctions.

[DriverR]

Thank you dZired for the report link. Just skimmed through and a few additional statistics caught my eye.

- Total number of road accidents went up in 2015 by 2.5% as compared to 2014 with a similar increase of road accident fatalities increase of 4.6% in 2015

- 53.8% of road accidents happen in Rural area while fatalities are 61.3% for Rural area.

- 28.4% accidents happened on National Highways, 24% on State Highways and 47.6% on Other Roads

- Highest type of accidents were Head on collision, accounting for 19.6% of the accidents with 17.4% fatalities.

- Two wheelers are involved in the highest % of road accidents (28.8%) with the highest fatalities of 31.5%. Second comes Cars, Jeep, Taxis at 23.6% with fatalities of 17.2%. Interestingly Pedestrians account for 9.5% fatalities, much more than Buses (7.4%), bicycles (2.1%) and Auto rickshaws (5%)

- A whooping 77.1% of all road accidents are due to Driver Fault

- Potholes accounted for 2.2% of accidents with 2.3% fatalities, while Speed bumps accounted for 2.2 % of accidents with 2.3% fatalities as well.

- 33.1% of people killed were in the age group of 15 - 24 with 21% being the age group of 25 - 34

- T Junctions caused the highest % of Junction-based accidents at 38.5% with Y Junctions coming second with 19.8% accidents

- 67.6% of traffic signal accidents happened at uncontrolled signal areas with 68.4% fatalities. Accidents at automated traffic signals were 12.9% with 11.9% fatalities

- 79.1% accidents were with regular driving license, compared to 11.9% with Learners License and 9% without license

- Overspeeding accounted for 47.9% of accidents with 44.2% fatalities

- Use of alcohol/drugs constituted 3.3% accidents with 4.6% fatalities

[bordeaux]

The Team-BHP news article has a bad link pointing to the PDF report by ministry. Can someone please fix that? The actual link is http://pibphoto.nic.in/documents/rli.../p20166905.pdf

[Rehaan]

Originally Posted by dZired

Some of the most important steps include new safety norms for automobiles, ... ...

Indeed.

Check out this thread : Would ABS or Airbags have helped? Data from Hundreds of Indian accidents analysed...

[Urban_Nomad]

Originally Posted by dZired

Some of the most important steps include new safety norms for automobiles, improved trauma care facilities and enhancing public awareness + responsibility

They missed a rather big one here - implementation ........ absolutely ruthless implementation of traffic laws with massive fines for those that break rules. I am willing to bet that this alone should help meet or even surpass the ministry's 50% target

[silverado]

Its nice to see government taking effort to ensure cars are safer, roads are safer.

We need to start from the first step itself - which is RTO's.
They need a overhaul everywhere , which I believe is in progress as well.

We need enough policemen on roads to ensure discipline.
There was a time when people used to be afraid of Mumbai Traffic police, but I don't see that nowadays, rules are broken blatantly.

I stay in Pune ( pcmc ) and the biggest menace here is Wrong side driving

[vinya_jag]

I don't think central initiatives are enough to improve the situation.
Cities, small/big, muncipal areas, towns, should start with initiatives. Not all of them need be the same.

You cannot hire enough policemen before 2020. Today, Bangalore has 13 Policemen every 1 Lakh citizens(Read this somewhere, need not be 100% true, but you all know how grim the situation is). You cannot double/ quadruple the force in the next two years.

We might start by volunteering to help some our traffic situation. I have seen area wardens manning signals on weekends, trying to educate. Heavy fines will not work in our country. Not everyone can pay a fine of 2000 Rupees, and be fine with it. There are many people in our country jumping signals just to earn those extra 2000 bucks. Non uniform fines/ and fines often is the trick for me.

If the police are in less force, let them use college students, as volunteers, and that way we are educating the youngsters, as well as making them more responsible.

Cameras are the way. They come cheap. We don't want a speed gun camera for all situations. A simple webcam can do the trick in many situations. The police have to become smart, and work on educating people, and not fine just to meet numbers.

[Urban_Nomad]

Originally Posted by vinya_jag

Heavy fines will not work in our country. Not everyone can pay a fine of 2000 Rupees, and be fine with it

That's the whole point, isn't it? You know the penalty is say 100 bucks for an offence. You wouldn't even think twice before repeating the offence coz you would happily pay up. Not that you would look forward to paying fines, but it would not register in your psyche as something which impacts you much. These penalties got to shake you up, affect your monthly budget and general well being. The impact is instant!

Originally Posted by vinya_jag

There are many people in our country jumping signals just to earn those extra 2000 bucks

Did not understand that. How do you earn money, 2000 or whatever; by not following a traffic signal?

[vinya_jag]

Consider this:
Frazer town Thoms bakery junction. There are three signals, each running 2 minutes, and they are not in sync.
A Pizza delivery person will have to wait for 6 whole minutes, each time he wants to deliver (Am talking about the worst case).
So, he takes the wrong side, or jumps the signal, as soon as he finds an opportunity.

Many such services run tight schedules. Yellow board taxis are the biggest ones. My own office people who come from outside, always jump into meetings until the last minute, and then ask the Cab guy to rush. How many times, have we all not done this? And then, they have a second pickup that they have to make in the next 30 minutes from another part of the city.

Many small time vendors enter Bangalore for a day, bring in their produce on TVSs and then head back to their villages. They are not aware of any rules, and they are in Bangalore once a week maybe, trying to sell what they made/ produced. They have no rules in their villages, (Maybe just 20 Kms from the city), and they don't follow any of them when they enter.

I know, huge fines will one day be in effect, but I feel, it should be gradual. And I totally agree, 100Re is too small an amount.
My concern is, one in a million offence is punished, and sometimes, they are almost a non-offence. 99,99,99...99 other offences go un-punished.

[printh]

My opinion, though long term one, will be very effective in controlling RTA numbers and fatalities.

"Educate the children right from primary through middle and high school"
The school can shape and sensitize the children to following traffic rules. A separate teaching module akin to the exam in RTO for issuing license should be included in school curriculum and have to be made passing in it mandatory. If such sensitized and responsible children develop, the next generation will have law abiding parents and teachers , who will further inculcate the rules in subsequent generations. Finally, after two generations (practically 2 decades) the people would have been really "educated" and "fit" to drive.

This would be the permanent solution as what amount of rules and procedures the government does for their implementation, without inculcation in childhood and by teachers & parents, they can`t succeed in reducing RTA.
As per my limited experience in northern Tamilnadu, i have observed most of the teenagers & villagers drive in an idiotic manner. Added to it, the parents riding with their children as pillions never follow any rules (especially during morning peak hours to drop off in school, during which they do all sorts of antics in roads) which is seen and observed subconsciously by their progeny, who then follow it in their adulthood. I feel THIS is the root cause for all the mayhem. Curbing this, along with strict rules by government will prove to be beneficial.

So, without changing people`s insight, each rule and it`s strict implementation will only result in the public devising methods to bypass it or escape from it rather than following it.

[Urban_Nomad]

Originally Posted by vinya_jag

Consider this:
Frazer town Thoms bakery junction. There are three signals, each running 2 minutes, and they are not in sync.
A Pizza delivery person will have to wait for 6 whole minutes, each time he wants to deliver (Am talking about the worst case).
So, he takes the wrong side, or jumps the signal, as soon as he finds an opportunity.

Wait a minute. I am pressed for time, so I can break the rules? I am getting late for work, so let me drive at break neck speeds else my boss will fire me.

What convoluted logic is this? Is someone's perceived importance of their time greater than a human being's life?

Originally Posted by vinya_jag

How many times, have we all not done this?

Many times I guess. And the results are for us all to see. A lakh plus dead and many more have suffered bodily harm

Originally Posted by vinya_jag

Many small time vendors enter Bangalore for a day, bring in their produce on TVSs and then head back to their villages. They are not aware of any rules, They have no rules in their villages, (Maybe just 20 Kms from the city), and they don't follow any of them when they enter.

You have no business being on the road if you don't know what you are supposed to be doing. Ignorance is not bliss; not in this case at least

Originally Posted by vinya_jag

I know, huge fines will one day be in effect, but I feel, it should be gradual.

Nope! The time is NOW. How many more should die before hard decisions are made? The problem with gradual increase in penalties also is the gradual increase in incomes, which kind of negates the pinch these fines are trying to bring in

Originally Posted by vinya_jag

My concern is, one in a million offence is punished, and sometimes, they are almost a non-offence. 99,99,99...99 other offences go un-punished.

The concept is very simple - To make an example of someone. You would not want to be the 1 out of 99,99,99...99 people who bears the harsh penalty and then has think about how screwed up are your finances for at least that month

[SmartCat]

Studying road safety in UK might help. 1965 was the peak, after which there has been a steady downward trend.




It's very obvious from the above graph that there are no quick fix solutions, and reducing accidents/fatalities in India by half within the next 5 years is very very unlikely.