The Centre has asked the states to adopt a new uniform road accident recording format to capture all significant details about crashes.
The move has come after the transport department found that FIRs pertaining to crashes suffer from under-reporting of information from accident sites and thus are inaccurate and incomplete.
The new format, formulated by a high-level panel and to be adopted by the police in all states and UTs, has been designed to capture all significant information like crash location, road condition, vehicles involved and details of victims.
The step assumes significance as India accounts for about 5 lakh road crashes per year in which about 1.5 lakh people lose lives and another 3 lakh are crippled.
"All the State Governments and UT Administrations have been requested to adopt the road accident Recording Format immediately so that they would be able to furnish the annual road accident data in the new Reporting Formats w.E.F calendar year 2017," the Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways said in a release.
"States/UTs and Million Plus Cities are required to furnish the annual road accident data to Transport Research Wing (TRW) of MoRTH within one month of the completion of a calendar year," it said.
Kirti Saxena, Senior Adviser of Transport Research Wing and Chairperson of the committee said, "FIRs at police station suffer from under reporting of data from the accident site, which are therefore inaccurate and incomplete."
The information related to accidents is recorded at police stations and these records are liable to be subjective as the police personnel fill it up according to their understanding and assign reasons for accidents as per their interpretation, the release said.
There are apprehensions that due to limited technical understanding, the police personnel recording the data are not able to recognise the role of road engineering defects, the nature of impacting vehicles and other such technical details that may have caused the accident, it said, adding that as a result these aspects that are so vital for ensuring road safety but remain unreported or under-reported.
Saxena elaborated that the committee met a number of times to look into the weaknesses of the existing format for reporting accidents.
"After studying the way accidents are reported in various states and also in other countries, the new format was recommended to the Ministry ... The main role would be that of the police for whom workshops would have to be held," she said.
Prof Geetam Tiwari from IIT Delhi and member of the committee said that at present reports are collected from police stations and state governments send their reports to the Centre.
She expressed hope that the new format would fill in gaps in reporting of accidents by minimising subjectivity.
Prof Sudeshna Mitra of IIT Kharagpur and member of the committee said that recording of the accident sites will play a crucial role in the task of reporting.
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