17% decrease in road accident in 2020: Govt

New Delhi: It seems the enforcement of stringent traffic rules has started yielding results as road accidents in the county have reduced from 1,40,843 in 2018 to 1,16,496 in 2020.

According to the information provided by Union Road Transport And Highways Minister Nitin Jairam Gadkari in a written reply to a question asked by Ramya Haridas, a Congress MP from Kerala, the country has recorded a decrease of 24,347 accidents in 2020, which is a decline of 17 per cent in comparison to the number of road accidents in 2018.

The decline in road mishaps was also recorded in 2019 as there were 1,37,191 accidents reported in the year.

As per the data provided by the Union Minister, the reduction in road accidents has been reported from all the major states like Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Karnataka, etc.

Though, most of the states and UTs reported a drop in road mishaps, states like Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Kerala, Rajasthan, Telangana, Assam, Tripura, and Delhi recorded a rise in road accidents in the year 2019 in compare to 2018. However, cases of road mishaps were dropped in the succeeding year 2020 in all these states.

In 2018, Madhya Pradesh had witnessed 9,967 accidents, which rose to 10,440 in 2019 and later reduced to 9,866 in 2020. Similarly, Bihar had reported 4,016 cases in 2018 that rose to 4,526 in 2019 and reduced to 4,101 in 2020. Kerala registered 9,161 cases in 2018 and 9,459 in 2019, which reduced to 6,594 cases in 2020.

In the case of Rajasthan, the state had reported 6,726 cases of road accidents in 2018, which increased to 6,883 in the next year and later reduced to 5,764 in 2020.

Among the major states, the cases of road mishaps came down to 15,269 in 2020 from 19,583 in 2018 in Tamil Nadu, while Uttar Pradesh reported a dip in road accidents from 16,198 in 2018 to 13,695 in 2020 and Maharashtra from 9,355 to 6,501. West Bengal registered an 18 per cent decrease in road accidents as cases dropped from 4,071 in 2018 to 3,338 in 2020.

However, Gadkari, in his written reply, also said that road accidents occur due to multiple reasons such as over-speeding, drunken driving, wrong side driving, use of mobile phones during driving, mechanical defect, poor road condition, poor geometrics of roads, etc which form black spots.