Delhi Police Commissioner, Sanjay Arora recently launched a report named Delhi Road Crash Fatalities Report 2021. It contained a detailed analysis of the road accidents that occurred during the last year.?
In 2021, a total of 1,239 people were killed in road crashes, while 4,273 people were injured. A decade ago, these figures were 1,822 fatalities and 5,115 injured.
Breaking the tradition, the Delhi Traffic Police have swapped the word 'accident' with 'crash' in its annual report. They reasoned that crashes are preventable events that are open to rational analysis and remedial action. However, according to them, 'accidents' suggest that they are inevitable. The previous report was titled Road Accidents in Delhi.
According to the report, pedestrians are the most vulnerable group, and motorcyclists are the second most group in the national capital. The share of pedestrians who were killed in road accidents increased to 29% in 2021, compared to the past decade. It means that more than one in three people killed in road crashes were pedestrians.
In 2021, pedestrians accounted for nearly 41% of the reported fatalities. On the other hand, two-wheeler riders accounted for 38.1% of all fatalities in road mishaps.?
The report also noted how the national capital witnessed population growth due to the influx of population from neighboring states. Parallelly, it resulted in a rise in vehicle volume leading to problems such as improper parking, traffic congestion, delays, and pollution due to vehicular emissions.?
Based on the report, Ring Road Bypass, Rohtak Road, Outer Ring Road, Ring Road, GTK Road, and Najafgarh Road are some of the high-risk corridors and dangerous stretches where the highest number of people were killed. Around 87 cluster points are crash-prone zones in Delhi.
The timing of the fatal crashes reported was between 9:00 p.m. and midnight during the winter season. The report attributes reasons such as low lighting, drunk driving, over-speeding, encroachments, unguarded civil work, poor road engineering, a large volume of commercial vehicles running during the night, overloading, and violation of traffic rules as the common causes of crashes.?
Recently, observing that developing countries have been witnessing an increase in road-related fatalities, the WHO released two new global guidelines for policymakers - which are on the use of helmets and pedestrian safety. The policy guidelines are based on new evidence and case studies and are co-written by experts from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).
As per WHO's data, more than 13 lakh people are killed in road accidents each year. They are the primary cause of death amongst people in the age range of 5-29. According to the report, in Delhi, among the 1,239 casualties reported, most victims were aged between 19 and 25.?
In the past decade, while the number of fatalities due to road accidents was reduced by 37%, the hit-and-run cases jumped from 50% (600 cases) in 2020 to 59% (708 cases) in 2021.