Roads far more unsafe than railways

A sense of urgency is required to tackle India's embarrassing record on road safety

There is much agonising over the safety record of the Indian Railways. There were 26,066 deaths due to accidents on railways in 2015. Contrast this with roads, where 148,707 died in 2015. Yet, a sense of urgency on road safety is still to pervade the collective consciousness, in spite of Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari putting it high on his priority list.

India signed the 2015 Brasilia Declaration committing to halve the number of deaths in road accidents by 2020. “Road Accidents in India - 2015”, released last year by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways shows that