Wrong-side and drunk driving key reasons for road accidents in India in 2020
Drunk driving and wrong-side driving have led to more road accidents in India in 2020 than any other. According to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, the first year of the pandemic saw a sharp drop in number of road mishaps.
In a written reply to Rajya Sabha, Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari said a total of 3,66,138 road accidents occurred in India during 2020. It is much less than 4,37,396 road accident cases recorded in the previous year.
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Gadkari said as many as 2,721 accidents took place due to vehicles jumping red light. Use of mobile phones while driving also caused 6,753 accidents. A total of 62,738 accidents occurred due to other reasons.
In 2019, more than 67 percent of people killed in road accidents due to overspeeding, while driving on the wrong side of the road led to 6 percent of all the accident related deaths in 2020. Use of mobile phones accounted for 3.3 percent of the deaths with drunken driving accounting for 3.5 percent of the persons killed.
In 2020, as many as 56,204 challans were issued to people found driving under the influence of alcohol. The number of such cases is much less in 2021 when only 48,144 challans were issued for similar violation.
Uttar Pradesh was the leading state last year as far as collecting fines from traffic violations are concerned. The state collected ₹447 crore as penalties, followed by Haryana with ₹326 crore, Rajasthan with ₹267 crore and Bihar with ₹258 crore.
The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) collected toll fees amounting to ₹27,744 crore in 2020-21. The collection stands at ₹24,989 crore from April up to December last year.
