Number theory: Most road accidents are avoidable, says govt data

Road accidents often largely occur due to two major factors – speeding, and driving on the wrong side of the road

Six members of a family were killed in an accident on the Delhi-Meerut Expressway in Ghaziabad on Tuesday after their car collided with a bus being driven on the wrong side of the road. Despite fatal road accidents appearing to be isolated incidents – only around five people die per year per 10,000 registered vehicles in India — an HT analysis of data from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways’ (MoRTH) Road Accidents in India reports show that there

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Does this mean speed limit should be reduced?

Drawing such a conclusion would be entirely wrong. Speed limits are clearly prescribed according to the speeds safe on a particular kind of road. MoRTH data also shows that accidents happen mostly when vehicles don’t adhere to those limits. Overspeeding is the leading violation that results in road accidents and deaths, accounting for 72% of cases and 70% deaths on all roads in 2021, and 74% of accidents and 72% deaths on national highways.

Driving on the wrong side, which was the cause behind the accident in Ghaziabad on July 11, was the other major factor. This is the second leading cause of accidents and deaths accounting for around 5% of cases and deaths both overall and on national highways.

Are accidents more common in darkness?

The accident in Ghaziabad took place early in the morning when the weather is cloudy. Could darkness also have a correlation with traffic accidents? This is a reasonable argument and a well-lit road will clearly aid driving. However, data does not suggest that more accidents take place in darkness. If 6am to 6pm is taken as the period of darkness, this period accounts for around 40% road accidents. To be sure, there is indeed a pattern to when road accidents take place during the day. The 6pm-9pm window is the riskiest, accounting for 18%-20% of accidents. Each of the two three-hour windows from midnight to 6am are the least risky. Similarly, inclement weather does not appear to increase accidents as well, as almost three-fourth of accidents take place in sunny and clear weather.

To be sure, not having a relation with time of day or weather does not necessarily rule them out as the cause behind accidents. In the case of both late nights as well as during times of inclement weather, there are always fewer vehicles on the road, which may be the biggest factor bringing the number of crashes down.

Are road accidents becoming more common?

The Ghaziabad accident is among one of many road accidents in recent times that managed to dominate national headlines. Cricketer Rishabh Pant was severely injured in a crash and former Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry died in a traffic accident last year; and these are only the most high-profile traffic accidents. So, are road accidents increasing? The answer to this question is yes, especially if one is looking at very long-term trends: from 114,000 in 1970 to 412,000 in 2021. However, this growth is to be somewhat expected as vehicle density has increased from 1.2 per kilometre in 1970 to 46.7 per kilometre in 2019. While road accidents are now four times that in 1970, the number of registered vehicles is over 200 times that in 1970. However, it is nobody’s case that even one avoidable death per 10,000 vehicles is acceptable (the rate was 5.1 per 10,000 vehicles in 2019), especially when the reason behind nearly all of them is violation of traffic rules.India remains one of the top countries in terms of fatalities in road accidents in the world even when adjusted for population (it was the top ranked country in absolute numbers in International Road Foundation report cited by MoRTH). Eleven people die per lakh population in India from road accidents, which is lower than the rate in only Iran, Colombia, Russia, and South Africa among top 20 countries by absolute accident numbers. This rate is double or worse than the rate in most developed countries in the list, such as the UK, Germany, or Japan.