Road transport is essential for development as it provides mobility to people and goods. However, it also exposes people to the risk of road accidents, injuries and fatalities. Exposure to adverse traffic environment is high in India because of the unprecedented rate of motorization and growing urbanization fueled by a high rate of economic growth.
As a result, incidents of road accidents, traffic injuries and fatalities have remained unacceptably high in India, which can be highlighted from the below arguments:
- Currently, road traffic injuries are one of the main reasons behind disabilities, death and hospitalization in the country. Road traffic injuries constitute the 8th leading cause of death in India in 2016 (IMHE; http://healthdata.org/india), and are the leading cause of health loss among young men of age 15- 49 years.
- India loses 3% of its GDP due to road accidents, most of which were preventable.
- Considering road safety as a serious concern, in 2015, India signed the Brasilia Declaration and committed to reducing road accidents and fatalities by half by 2020. So far, the decrease in road accidents has not been substantial.
- Road accident victims largely constitute young people in the productive age groups underscoring major implications on the economic cost of road accidents, apart from their emotional and psychological impact. Young adults in the age group of 18 – 45 years accounted for the highest share of 72.1% and the working-age group,18 – 60 accounted for a share of 87.2% in the total road accident fatalities.
- Road accidents tend to be concentrated in urban areas because of the dense population and road traffic congestion.
- As per World Road Statistics 2017 published by International Road Federation, Geneva, road accident fatality risk, i.e., fatality per 1,00,000 population and injury risk, i.e., road accident injury per 1,00,000 population is higher in India (around 11 per lakh) , second to Russian federation (16 per lakh) among 22 countries.
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