According to the NCRB's annual crime report, around 1.2 lakh people have died as a result of road accidents in 2020. That means, despite the COVID-19 restrictions in the country, an average of 328 people lost their lives in road accidents every day.
According to the reports, from 2018 to 2020, about 3.92 lakh people are cut their lives in road accidents. However, in 2020, 12.2% fewer deaths were recorded when compared to 2019 (1.36 lakh mortality). On the other hand, the death toll in road accidents in 2018 was 1.35 lakh. The report further states that that the country has logged 41,196 cases of “hit and run” in 2020 (average 112 cases per day), while the number of such cases was 47,504 and 47,028 in 2019 and 2018, respectively.
On the other hand, rash and careless driving behavior prompted nearly 1.30 lakh deaths in 2020, 1.60 lakh in 2019, and 1.66 lakh in 2018. Besides, 52 people died in rail accidents in 2020, which is 5.45% less than the number of incidents that took place in 2019 and 49% higher than in 2018.
Overall, 133 cases of deaths in 2020 were due to medical negligence, while 51 deaths were due to negligence of municipal bodies & 6,367 cases were due to other heedlessness.
It is important to know that the number of vehicles in the country has been rapidly growing. Therefore, the government has to keep up with the essential infrastructure. Apart from this, the authority must ensure that cheap and good medical treatment can be provided to its people at the earliest in the event of an accident. Additionally, the safety norms related to automobiles should be made more stringent. At the same time, there is an urgent need to eliminate the corruption spread in the transport department. Last but not the least, citizens should also understand their responsibilities towards society and traffic rules.
