Road accidents claimed 1.55 lakh lives in India in 2021, sharp rise over 2020

India remains among the top countries when it comes to road accidents. National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has released its data on road accidents in India in 2021, which shows the number of such incidents and deaths have increased sharply compared to 2020. One of the reasons why such incidents or fatalities have increased compared to 2020 is that movement of vehicles have opened up after the Covid-19 lockdowns.

According to the NCRB data, the number of road accidents in India increased by 12 per cent last year compared to 2020. There were more than four lakh recorded cases of road accidents in 2021, up from 3.54 lakh in the first year of Covid-19. Number of people who lost their lives due to road mishaps went up by nearly 17 per cent from 1.33 lakh deaths in 2020 to 1.55 lakh in 2021. Around 3.71 lakh people were also injured in these incidents. The NCRB report said that the rate of deaths per thousand vehicles in 2021 have increased to 0.53 from 0.45 in 2020.

Road accidents in Mizoram, Punjab, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh have caused more deaths than number of injured. In Mizoram, 64 people were killed in as many number of road accidents with injuries to just 28 people. In Punjab, 4,516 people were killed in 6,097 road accidents and in Uttar Pradesh, 21,792 people were killed in 33,711 road accidents.

Every year, the country witnesses lakhs of road accidents, with a majority of them involving two-wheelers. These road accidents result in a huge number of deaths, critical injuries or paralysis.

Several reasons are attributed to these accidents. While many accidents are caused by various traffic rule violations, some of them are caused due to technical faults of the vehicles. Some road accidents even take place due to bad road conditions and fault in road design as well.