NCRB data: Deaths due to negligence decline in city

In 2024, Delhi saw a drop in negligence deaths to 2000, despite increased incidents, due to better reporting and worsening traffic congestion.

The Capital saw a decrease in deaths due to negligence in 2024, even while the incidents of such crimes saw an increase, according to the national crime records bureau’s (NCRB) Crime in India report for the year 2024, published on Wednesday.

Experts stated that the pattern was due to improvement in accident reporting systems and an increase in traffic congestion occurring simultaneously.

The report states that the total number of “deaths due to negligence” in Delhi in 2024 was 2000, with the police recording 1833 cases under the category. In 2023’s report, the number of deaths under the same category had been given as 2242, while 1758 incidents had been recorded. The number of deaths due to road accidents –a sub-category which made up for most of the deaths – also followed the same pattern, with the number of deaths decreasing from 1903 in 2023 to 1658 in 2024, while the number of incidents recorded in the category increased from 1432 to 1521.

Experts stated that the pattern was due to improvement in accident reporting systems and an increase in traffic congestion occurring simultaneously. “Our system for reporting road accidents has been made better. The e-Detailed Accident Report (eDAR) system maintains a very thorough level of reporting. If any crash happens, it has to be immediately properly reported to relevant stakeholders, including police and other road owning authorities. At the same time, traffic congestion has worsened. Due to this, the number of fatalities has decreased, while crashes and accidents are getting reported more, including those that do not result in fatalities,” said S. Velmurugan, ex-head of the traffic engineering and safety division at the Central Road Research Institute.

According to the bureaus data, the number of hit and run incidents and deaths have both decreased from 2023 to 2024, with the number of incidents decreasing from 697 to 642, and the number of deaths decreasing from 794 to 709. Deaths due to accidents other than hit and runs follow a pattern similar to the overall, with the number of accidents increasing from 735 to 879 across the two years, while the number of deaths has gone down from 1109 to 949.

In 2024, Delhi saw 5 deaths due to medical negligence, a decrease from 6 deaths in 2023, 5 deaths due to negligence by civic bodies, an increase from 0 in 2023, 0 deaths due to negligence relating to rail accidents, with 2023 recording the same number. The number of deaths due to other types of negligence was 332 in 2024, with 303 cases, while it was 333 in 2023, with 320 cases.