The road sector has been one of the major gainers from the opening up of the infrastructure to private sector investors. The pick-up in investments has helped significantly extend the road network in recent years. The total length of roads has increased from 33.25 lakh km in 2000 to 42.36 lakh km in 2008. While the length of the national highways has increased from 52,000 km to 66,800 km during the period, that of state highways has gone up from 1.32 lakh km to 1.54 lakh km.
However, the increase in the road network has not been accompanied by any significant improvement in quality. The overall numbers show that the share of surfaced roads has gone up only marginally from 47.3% in 2000 to 49.3% in 2008. And the growth of the road network has also failed to keep pace with the growth of vehicles. Estimates made by the ministry of transport shows that while the road length has increased by a compound annual average growth rate of 2.7% in the 2000-2009 period, that of the registered vehicles has gone up by 10%.
The increase in use of vehicles and and expanding road network has, unfortunately, also increased the costs. Today road traffic injuries has become one of the important reasons for accidents, deaths, disabilities and hospitalisations. In fact global estimates show that the cost of road crash injuries cost roughly 1% of the gross national product (GNP) in low-income countries, 1.5% in middle-income countries and 2% in high-income countries. In the case of India, the socio-economic cost of road accidents was estimated to be 3 % of GDP in 1999-2000. The excessive burden of road traffic injuries and deaths are large mainly because of its disproportionately large impact on the productive workforce. For example, in the case of India more than half of the road accident victims are in the 25-65 age group, the major wage earning group who are breadwinners for their families.
And in India?s case the numbers show that between 1970 and 2009, there was a three-fold increase in the road network and a 64-fold increase in the number of registered motor vehicles. Consequently, the number of accidents increased by 4.3 times, resulting in a sevenfold increase in injuries and an 8.7 times increase in fatalities. Most recent estimates for 2009 show that there were around 4.9 lakh road accidents that killed 1,25,660 people and injured more than 5 lakh persons in India. This indicates that there was approximately one road accident every minute and one road accident death every four minutes for India. But more than the nominal number of the accidents, the real cause for concern is the intensity and the severity of accidents.
The total number of road accidents reported by all the states and Union Territories in 2009 were 4.86 lakh, of which 22.8% or 1.10 lakh were fatal. The number of persons killed in the accidents was 1.25 lakh, which indicates an average of one fatality per 4.4 accidents. Moreover, the proportion of fatal accidents in total road accidents has consistently increased from 17.6% in 2001 to 22.8% in 2009. The severity of road accidents, which is measured in terms of persons killed per 100 accidents, had also increased from 19.9 in 2001 to 25.8 in 2009.
To get an appropriate measure of incidence of accidents, one has to look at the the normalised /standardised accident rates worked out in terms of number of accidents per lakh persons, per 10,000 motor vehicles and per 1,000 km of the road length. The substantial addition to the motor vehicles between 1970-2009 has ensured that the ratio of accidents, injuries and fatalities per 10,000 vehicles has fallen during the period. But the slower growth in the population and road length has ensured that the ratio of accidents per lakh population and per 100 km of roads has gone up in the four decades.
In the case of the population ratio while the number of accidents has doubled, the ratio of injuries has gone up almost threefold while that of deaths has increased fourfold, indicating that the severity of accidents has gone up substantially over the years. In the case of the ratio to 1,000 km of roads, the numbers has gone up more than double in the case of both persons killed or injured killed in accidents, once again indicating the increase in the severity of the accidents even though the increase in the accidents per 1,000 km of roads has gone up only marginally.
One surprising aspect of the distribution of the road accidents across states is that the number of accidents is not significantly related to the overall size of the transport fleet. For instance though Gujarat accounted for a share of 9.6% in the number of registered vehicles in 2009, it had lower shares of total road accidents (6.4%), persons injured (6.4%) and persons killed (5.6%) in 2009. In contrast Kerala, which accounted for a 4.2% share in total registered vehicles in 2009, had a 7.3% share in total road accidents and 8% share of persons injured in road accidents. However, Kerala accounts for a lower share of 3% in the total road accident-related deaths during 2009
The statewise distribution of the ratio of accidents, injuries and fatalities also show wide disparity in the severity of accidents. Three of the five states with the highest number of accidents were from the south. But Maharashtra topped the list, followed by Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
But though Maharashtra topped the accident ranking with a 14.8% share, the severity of accidents in the states was substantially lower as the share of injured was only 9.3% and the share of the fatalities was even lower at 9.1%. But the scenario was slightly different in the case of Tamil Nadu, whose share of the injured was a higher 13.7%, which is marginally higher than its share of accidents (12.5%). The only consolation is that Tamil Nadu’s share of fatalities at 10.9% was still lower than its accident share. Madhya Pradesh also had a similar picture with the number of injured higher than the share of accidents but lower than the share of fatalities. However, the severity of accidents seems to be much higher in the case of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, where the share of both fatalities and the injured was higher than the share of accidents.
However, a normalised distribution of road accident as a ratio of population show a completely different picture. The number of road accidents per lakh of population in 2009 was highest in Goa (252) followed by Puducherry (134), and the lowest in Nagaland at a low of 2.9. Goa and Puducherry also had the highest number of persons injured per lakh of population at 179 and 137, respectively in 2009, followed by Kerala at 122. Lakshadweep, Nagaland and Bihar reported the lowest number of persons injured per lakh of population at around 4, 7 and 7.5, respectively. However, the highest number of persons killed per lakh of population in 2009 on account of road accidents was in Tamil Nadu (20.7) followed by Goa (19.4) and Haryana(18.7). On the other hand, Nagaland reported the lowest figure of 2.5, followed by Lakshadweep at 2.7
For 2009, Sikkim had the highest number of road accidents per 10,000 vehicle population at about 198, followed by Arunachal Pradesh at 139, while the lowest figure reported was by Nagaland. However, Arunachal Pradesh had the highest number of persons injured per 10,000 vehicles at around 240 in 2009, followed by Sikkim at 152. And Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim had the highest road related accident deaths per 10,000 vehicles in 2009 at 72 and 31 respectively
The rural-urban differences tilted more towards areas with the larger population share. Numbers for 2009 show that the total number of accidents that occurred in rural areas were more than that in the urban areas; the former accounting for 52.6% (2.55 lakh) and the latter accounting for 47.4% (2.30 lakh of total accidents. Rural areas also had more fatalities (61.7%) than urban areas (38.3%). The number of persons injured was also more in rural areas (60.2%) compared with urban areas (39.8%).
The distribution of the total accidents during night time (6 pm to 6 am) and day time (6 am to 6 pm) is approximately in the ratio of 2:3, i.e., about 41% during night time and 59% during daytime. In the case of age of the people involved in accidents it was observed that the age group 25-65 years accounted for the largest share of 53% of total road accident casualties followed by the age group 15-24 years with a share of about 30%. Hence, about half of the road traffic casualties are in the age group 25-65 years.
And finally, when it comes to the cause of accidents, it was the drivers? fault that accounted for 78.5% (3.81 lakh) of total accidents; 77.4% (3.99 lakh) of persons injured) and 71.7% (0.90 lakh) of persons killed in road accidents during 2009 . Exceeding lawful speed accounted for a high share of 57.5% (2.19 lakh out of 3.81 lakh accidents). As percent share of total accidents and deaths due to ?drivers? fault?, intake of alcohol/drugs accounted for 7.1% and 10.3% of the accidents, respectively. Overloading or overcrowding of vehicles accounted for 96,012 road accidents and 28,444 road deaths, which constituted 19.7% and 22.6% of the accidents and deaths, respectively.