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Road crash deaths rose to 177,177 in 2024, Centre tells Parliament
Fatalities increased 2.5% from 172890 in 2023; roughly 485 people died every day across India in road accidents in 2024
New Delhi: The number of road crash fatalities rose to 177,177 in 2024, the Union government told Parliament on Thursday.
Fatalities increased 2.5% from 172890 in 2023; roughly 485 people died every day across India in road accidents in 2024.
Chief scientist and head of the traffic engineering and safety division at the Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) S Velmurugan said India’s road crash deaths data corresponds to a trend seen in the global north in the previous decades.
“The latest rise in road fatalities is not surprising because India has still not reached the saturation point that many developed countries hit in the late 1990s, where numbers plateaued and then steadily dipped. In contrast, India continues to see a boom in vehicle ownership and rapid highway construction, but the safety standards meant to accompany this growth are not being implemented fully on the ground,” he said.
“We are building roads at impressive speeds of 40 km a day (national highways), but the safety features expected on paper are not consistently delivered by field-level agencies,” he added.
He said speeding and faulty road engineering primarily contribute to India’s crash burden, making enforcement the most decisive intervention . He said on many occasions highways cutting through a settlement fail to provide basic pedestrian facilities that become a direct trigger for crashes. “Enforcement must be ruthless and systemic. Catching speeding at a single camera point is no longer useful because drivers slow down when they see a sign. Sectional speed monitoring between toll plazas—which we now have every 40–50 km—should become standard. If a vehicle covers that stretch suspiciously fast, there should be immediate penal action. Only then will behaviour change.”
The road crash death toll for 2024 was shared by Union road transport minister Nitin Gadkari while replying to a question by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) lawmaker A Raja .
As part of his reply, Gadkari said the Stockholm Declaration on Road Safety, adopted at the third Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in February 2020 had set a new global target to reduce road traffic deaths and injuries by 50% by 2030 ; India is a signatory. He also said India’s fatality rate per lakh population is 11.89 compared with China’s 4.3 and 12.76 in the US, according to World Road Statistics, 2024.
In a separate reply, Gadkari said a total of 5,480 road crash survivors were found eligible for cashless treatment from the Motor Vehicle Accident Fund under the Cashless Treatment for Road Accident Victims Scheme, 2025. He added that 32,557 hospitals across 36 states and union territories have been empanelled under the scheme.
