Overspeeding Remains Primary Cause Of Fatal Accidents, Says Govt Report

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) recently published the Road Accidents in India report for 2021 providing a closer look at the number of road accidents, causes and trends for the previous calendar year (2021). As per the report, the country recorded 4,12,432 road accidents during the year with 1,53,972 fatalities. The data attributed a major part of these accidents to over-speeding.

According to the MoRTH, 2,95,522 reported accidents occurred in the country in 2021 due to overspeeding with over 1.07 lakh fatalities. This accounted for about 71.7 per cent of total accidents during the year and 69.6 per cent of fatalities. Other factors such as road environment, vehicular condition, etc were the second highest contributor with 77,536 accidents (18.8 per cent) and 31,639 road deaths (20.5 per cent). Driving on the wrong side was the third leading contributor with 21,491 reported accidents and 8,122 deaths.

Road accident causes on National Highways for 2021.

Out of a total of 1,28,825 reported accidents on National Highways, India reported 95,785 accidents (74.4 per cent) related to overspeeding in 2021. The number of fatalities stood at 40,450 or 72.2 per cent of the 56,007 deaths. Other road factors remained the second biggest cause followed by wrong-side driving. Based on cumulative data from cities 67,301 accidents and 15,350 fatalities were reported during 2021 of which 45,942 accidents (68.3 per cent) and 9,985 deaths (65 per cent) were caused due to overspeeding. As with overall and highway data, other road factors were the second leading cause of accidents and fatalities followed by wrong-side driving/riding.

Drunk driving was the fourth leading cause of accidents and fatalities contributing to 2.2 per cent of road accidents and deaths in the country.