Over 1.16L road accidents, about 48K deaths on nat'l highways in 2020: Govt

New Delhi: A total of 1,16,496 road accidents occurred on National Highways (NHs), including Expressways, in 2020, causing 47,984 deaths, Parliament was informed on Wednesday.

In 2019, a total of 1,37,191 accidents had taken place on NHs, including Expressways, which resulted in 53,872 deaths, according to a written reply to the Rajya Sabha by Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari.

The minister said that advanced traffic management systems are an integral part of the concession agreement and have been revised recently to include advanced technology-based solutions like incidence detection smart cameras, emergency telephone boxes, CCTV cameras to improve the safety of commuters as well as improve the surveillance network for security purposes.

In addition, he said the ministry is developing way-side amenities along the highways to provide users with hospitals for medical services and also helipads for emergency evacuation in case of medical emergencies.

Replying to a separate question, Gadkari said a total of 1,640 permissions have been granted by the ministry for access to private properties from NHs in the last three years.

Replying to another question, he said user fee notification for collection of user fee on Delhi-Meerut Expressway (NE-3) is likely to commence soon.

Meanwhile, in 2020, every 100 road crashes claimed, on an average, 37 lives as recorded by police across the country, the most in the last five years. Overall road deaths, however, reduced due to the pandemic induced restrictions on vehicle movement for months.

A comparative analysis of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data from 2017 to 2020 shows that the number of lives lost per 100 road crashes was 35 in 2019, 34 in 2018 and 32 in 2017. This is also defined as the "severity of accidents" and an indicator of how safe or unsafe roads are.