150,000 people killed in road accidents in 2016: Report

Nearly every minute there was an accident in the country last year and about every four minutes a fatality was reported in the year 2016, says a government report released on Wednesday.

A total of 480,000 road accidents took place in India which resulted in the loss of 150,000 lives and injured 494,000 people, the 'Road Accidents in India 2016' said in its report. 

As compared to 2015, the number of road accidents in 2016 is lower by 4.1% but the number of persons killed in 2016 has increased by 3.2% over 2015. 

Around 46% people killed on Indian roads belonged to the age group of 18-35 years.

Two-wheeler riders are the most vulnerable road users, 33.8% users were killed in the road accidents. In 2015, it was 28.8%. Two-wheeler riders were followed by cars, jeeps and taxis 23.6%, trucks, tempos, tractors and other articulated vehicles 21%, buses 7.8%, auto-rickshaws 6.5% and other motor vehicles 2.8%. The share of two wheelers in total road accidents has increased to 33.8% in 2016.

For the first time, the report mentioned that 1.2% of the accidents happened due to the use of mobile phones.  

About 37% of total accidents took place on traffic junctions during the calendar year 2016. Within traffic junctions, uncontrolled ones contributed to a major portion of road accidents (72.9%) underscoring the importance of traffic control mechanism at junctions.

In 2016, potholes accounted for 6,424 road accidents, causing 2,324 fatalities. Another 9,583 accidents causing 3,396 accident were due to speed breakers.

The highest number of road accidents occurred on two-lane roads (190,800) followed by single lane (177,067), four lanes with median (67,179) and more than two lanes road without median (35,290) in 2016.

Tamil Nadu topped the number of road accidents in the entire country with a percentage share of 14.9% followed by Madhya Pradesh (11.2%) and Karnataka (9.2%). In case of road accident deaths, Uttar Pradesh topped the list with a percentage share of 12.8% followed by Tamil Nadu (11.4%) and Maharashtra (8.6%).

The age profile of road accident victims in 2016 reveals that age group 18-35 years accounted for 46.3% (69,851 persons) and age group of 18-45 accounted for a share of 68.6% (1,03,409 persons).

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways said that several measures have been taken to mitigate the accidents. These include improving road engineering, vehicle safety standards, enforcement of road safety laws and post crash response and trauma facilities. 

As many as 789 black spots have been identified of which 140 have been rectified, the report said. The national highways constitute about 2% of the total road network of India but they accounted for 30% of total Road accidents and about 35% of persons killed in road accidents during 2016.