An Indian dies in a road mishap every 4 minutes

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged the issue of road accidents in his Mann ki Baat programme last week. The PM said he was deeply worried about the high rate of casualties caused by road mishaps. He mentioned the recent case of a scooter rider lying bleeding on a road in Delhi with nobody helping him. "Several people have been writing to me that I should speak on road safety to create awareness about it. When we see the figures, we notice that in India, an accident takes place every minute and a death due to these takes place every four minutes. Among the victims, one-third are in the age group of 15-25 years," the PM noted. Business Standard did a check on India's road accident record and discovered some trends. For example, while national highways make up only 1.6 per cent of roads in India, they account for 32.6 per cent of total accidents. A look at a few more trends: