Guwahati: Mizoram has the highest accident severity rate in the country, while Sikkim recorded the highest fatality rate in the country.
This was revealed in the report ‘Road accidents in India — 2020’, prepared by the Transport Research Wing (TRW) of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) and released today.
According to the report, road accidents parameters registered a significant decline in 2020 compared to 2019. Total accidents decreased on an average by 18.46 per cent, the number of persons killed decreased by 12.84 per cent and the number of injuries decreased by 22.84 per cent over previous year’s average.
A total of 3,66,138 road accidents have been reported by States and Union Territories (UTs) during the calendar year 2020, which claimed 1,31,714 lives and caused 3, 48,279 injuries.
The number of road accidents has been on decline since 2016, except for a marginal increase of 0.46 per cent in 2018. For the second consecutive year, the total number of road accidents fatalities has declined in 2020. Similarly, the number of persons injured has been on the decline since 2015.
Tamil Nadu with 45,484 accidents (12.4%) has recorded the highest number of road accidents in 2020, however, the number of persons killed in road accidents has been the highest in Uttar Pradesh (19,149 i.e. 14.5%).
On the overall road accidents in Northeast, the report says despite some marginal fluctuations, the percentage share of North Eastern States in total accidents has been constant during the last four years from 2016 to 2020.
Among the North Eastern States, Assam recorded the highest number of accidents during 2016 to 2020, however, marked a significant reduction in growth of 21 percent in 2020 on average over 2019. Nagaland with 500 accidents is in second place followed by Tripura (466) and Manipur (432).
Mizoram (79) recorded the highest accident severity followed by Bihar (78) and Punjab
(75).
“Road accident severity measured by the number of persons killed per 100 accidents
increased from 33.7 in 2019 to 36.0 in 2020″ the report says.
The report says the long-run trend despite some marginal fluctuations has been on increase since 2000. It underscores the need for improved trauma care and traffic calming measures, which aim at reducing crash-impact parameters.
Data in the report shows that about 60 percent of states in the country have accident severity higher than the national average of 36.
“Fatality rate is used to explain road accidents relative to vehicular population in the country. It is measured by the number of road accidents fatalities (persons killed) per 10,000 vehicles” the report says.
The national average accident fatality rate has been declining over the years and remained at 5.1 in 2020.
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