Page 8 - Road Accidents

India's own road accident safety assessment system: What is Bharat NCAP?

At the NCAP launch event, Gadkari also said that the cost of safety testing abroad is Rs 2.50 crore, while in India it is Rs 60 lakh

Himachal monsoon mayhem: 199 people dead, 31 missing till now: SDMA

Out of 199 deaths, 57 were due to landslides and flash floods while 142 people died due to road accidents during the monsoon period

CM announces Rs 5 lakh aid to families of deceased in Maha's crane accident

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday condoled the loss of lives in the tragic accident at Shahapur in Maharashtra and announced an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh for the next of kin of each of the deceased and an assistance of Rs 50,000 for the injured persons. Sixteen workers were killed and three injured as a crane fell on a bridge slab during construction of the third phase of Samruddhi Expressway in Shahapur tehsil of Thane district on Tuesday, an official said. Three to five persons are still feared trapped and efforts are on to rescue them, an NDRF official said. The injured have been shifted to nearby hospital, he added. It was a special-purpose mobile gantry crane used in bridge construction and to install precast box girders in highway construction projects. The accident took place shortly after midnight on Tuesday near Sarlambe village in Shahapur tehsil, around 80 km from Mumbai, the official said. The Prime Minister's Office in a tweet said, "Pained by the tragic mishap in

Road accidents top cause for youth's, kids' death globally: Ficci-EY report

Road accidents claim around 1.5 million lives in India every year, contributing 11 per cent to the total number of such fatalities globally, according to a FICCI-EY report. Globally, at least one life is lost every 24 seconds due to road traffic injury, said the report released on Tuesday. As per the World Health Organisation (WHO), road crash is the 8th leading cause of death with more than 1.3 billion deaths and 50 million serious injuries. It is the leading cause of death amongst youth and kids aged 5 to 29 years, it said. "1st rank in road fatalities is held by India (11 per cent share in the world). Every year India loses 1.5 million lives in road crashes...Every year we lose a number of people the size of the population of Estonia," the report titled 'Road Safety in India - Navigating through nuances' said. India is a signatory to Brasilia Declaration which aims to half the number of global deaths and injuries from road traffic crashes by 2030. The report was released by Tuk

6 people killed in SUV-truck head-on collision in MP's Sagar district

Police said that the offending truck crossed the central divider of GT Karnal road and rammed into truck carrying Kanwar yatris who were going to Haridwar

Punjab govt to introduce specialised force to check road accidents

The Punjab government will raise a specialised force to streamline traffic movement and check road accidents, which claim 12-14 lives in the state on an average every day, an official said. To be raised as a part of the Punjab Police, the Sadak Surakhya Force (Road Safety Force) personnel will be deployed at national and state highways where nearly 75 per cent of road accidents occur every year. With a strength of around 1,300 personnel, the force will be equipped with modern gadgets such as body cameras and breathalysers, they said. The force will also be given interceptors to check the speed of vehicles. "Our effort is that the force will start functioning before August 15," said Additional Director General of Police AS Rai, the force's nodal officer. The state government has earmarked nearly Rs 40 crore for the Sadak Surakhya Force, he said. Its personnel will also get a special uniform, he said. "The uniform is being designed. As it will be a specialised force, its uniform wil

15 killed, over 20 injured as container truck hits four vehicles in Dhule

Official said the truck rammed into a hotel near a bus stop on the highway and overturned

88 killed in accidents on Samruddhi expressway since Dec 2022: Official

As many as 88 people have lost their lives in road accidents on Samruddhi Expressway in Maharashtra, including 25 on Saturday as a private bus caught fire after hitting the divider, since it was partially thrown open last December, an official said. Road hypnosis is cited as one of the causes of the accidents on the six-lane wide access-controlled expressway, the state highway police official said. Highway hypnosis or driving hypnosis is a condition when the driver zones out while driving a vehicle without remembering what occurred in that specific period. A total of 39 fatal accidents have occurred on the Nagpur-Mumbai expressway since last December, the official said citing data. Besides, 616 minor and major accidents have occurred on this expressway in which 656 people sustained serious and minor injuries, he said. Most accidents were caused due to reasons like over-speeding, drivers dozing off at the wheel, and tyre bursts. The official said Highway Police are trying to tackl

Need to move from dangerous streets for cars to safe spaces for people: WHO

The governments and various stakeholders need to rethink mobility as there is an urgent need to move from the dirty and dangerous streets for cars to safe, green and vibrant spaces designed for the people, WHO's Head of Safety and Mobility, Nhan Tran, said on Monday. Road accidents kill more than 1.3 million people each year - more than two every minute - with 9 in 10 of these preventable deaths occurring in low-and middle-income countries. Road crashes are the leading global killer of children and youth aged 5-29. We must urgently move from an old model of drab, dirty and dangerous streets built for cars, to safe, green and vibrant spaces designed and built for people. Mobility underpins so many other aspects of public health and development. By making walking and cycling safe, we can reduce air pollution and fight climate change," Tran said at the Vision Zero Conference on Road Safety here in the Swedish capital. By prioritising the safety of vulnerable road users like pedestrians

Raj govt approves road safety task force, targets 50% accident reduction

A dedicated task force for road safety will be set up at the district level to curb road accidents, the Rajasthan government said, adding that it aims to reduce accidents and deaths linked to it by 50 per cent by 2030. According to a statement issued here on Tuesday, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has given approval for the formation of 'Road Safety Task Force' at the district level involving officers of various departments. The Department of Transport and Road Safety will be the administrative arm of this task force, the statement said. A meeting of the task force will be held at least once every three months. The District Road Safety Task Force will be responsible for effective implementation of the annual action plan, and the decisions of the committee to bring about 50 per cent reduction in road accidents and deaths linked to it by 2030, it said. The tenure of the District Road Safety Task Force will be three years, the statement added.

India cannot achieve target to cut 50% road accidents by 2024: Gadkari

India will not be able to achieve the target of reducing road accidents by 50 per cent before 2024 due to many shortcomings on the part of the government and other people, who compromise with road safety standards, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Wednesday. He pointed out that more people die in road accidents than in street fights, riots or terrorist attacks. "We had said that we will reduce the number of road accidents by 50 per cent before 2024. But we could not do (reduce) much. We could not do it because we have certain shortcomings and there are other people who are not doing their bit," Gadkari said while addressing a public function here. Stressing the need for improvement in road engineering, he said, "People who prepare Detailed Project Report (DPR) are not doing their job properly. Their mindset is that there should be saving (reduce) on the cost". They compromise with road safety standards while preparing DPR to reduce the cost of construction and deliberately don'

Samruddhi Expressway sees 39 deaths in accidents since launch in Dec 2022

A total of 39 persons have lost their lives and 143 were injured in accidents on the Mumbai-Nagpur Samruddhi Expressway since its launch in December 2022 till the end of April this year, a senior police official has said. Addressing the media on Friday, the State Highway Police official said "road hypnotism" was one of the causes of these accidents. Road hypnosis, also called white line fever, is an altered mental state faced by drivers due to "automaticity" or the process of doing things automatically without actively thinking about the steps involved. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on December 11, 2022 inaugurated the first phase of the expressway between Nagpur and Shirdi that covers a distance of 520 km. The length of the total project, officially named as 'Hindu Hrudaysamrat Balasaheb Thackeray Maharashtra Samruddhi Mahamarg', is 701 km. The project is aimed at reducing the travel time from Nagpur to Mumbai to seven hours. "There were 358 accidents on the Samruddhi Corridor

Around 99% of Indian pedestrians at risk of injury, reports Bosch

As many as 99 per cent of Indian pedestrians are at risk of injury with about one in every ten traffic-related fatalities in the country being a pedestrian, according to a report by Bosch Ltd. In 2021, India's pedestrian fatalities numbered 29,200, exceeding the combined road fatalities of the entire European Union and Japan with another 60,000 pedestrians injured, said the report based on accident database of over 6,300 cases of the Road Accident Sampling System for India (RASSI). "Every second pedestrian accident in rural roads contributes to pedestrian fatality. However, in urban and semi-urban areas, the fatality risk of pedestrians is relatively lower in comparison with rural roads," Bosch Ltd said in a statement. Bosch India Principal Advisor Road Safety, Future Mobility & Expert Accident Research, Girikumar Kumaresh said the report sheds light on the contributing factors to pedestrian accidents and highlights the need for effective road safety measures and a ...

Poor diligence while granting driving licences is costing lives on roads

Lack of proper diligence while granting driving licence and inadequate law enforcement were resulting in a high number of road fatalities in Maharashtra, experts said. According to the data shared by the Maharashtra transport department, 97.24 per cent of 32.04 lakh citizens who applied for driving licences had passed the tests, while only 2.4 per cent failed and 0.36 per cent did not turn up. Among the 50 regional transport offices (RTOs) in Maharashtra, 14 had a failure rate of less than 1 per cent among driving test applicants, while only six had a failure rate of more than 5 per cent, the data said. What is more serious is that in some RTO offices, the failure rate was below 0.50 per cent and a few had it more than 7-8 per cent. Experts say it is difficult to understand how so many drivers were passing driving tests, considering the alarming number of accidents on state roads. "With each passing day, we hear of horrific road crashes that claim lives of innocent people. The ...

Covid-19 dropped to fourth leading cause of death in US last year

U.S. deaths fell last year, and COVID-19 dropped to the nation's No. 4 cause, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday. COVID-19 deaths trailed those caused by heart disease, cancer and injuries such as drug overdoses, motor vehicle fatalities and shootings. In 2020 and 2021, only heart disease and cancer were ahead of the coronavirus. U.S. deaths usually rise year-to-year, in part because the nation's population has been growing. The pandemic accelerated that trend, making 2021 the deadliest in U.S. history, with more than 3.4 million deaths. But 2022 saw the first drop in deaths since 2009. The 2022 tally was about 3.3 million a 5 per cent decline from 2021 but still much higher than in the years before the pandemic. The CDC cautioned that last year's numbers are preliminary and may change a little after further analysis. Coronavirus-associated death rates fell for nearly all Americans. The virus was deemed the underlying cause of about 187,000 U.S. death

2 killed, 8 injured after Thar driver loses control in Delhi: Police

"The injured people are undergoing treatment at the All India Institute Of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Trauma Centre," the official said

Pedestrians involved in 22% road crash cases in Himachal Pradesh: Data

Road accidents in Himachal Pradesh have claimed 6,530 lives and left 26,600 people injured in the past six years, with pedestrians being hit in 22 per cent cases and accounting for 15 per cent deaths, according to police data. In the latest accident on Tuesday, a car ploughed into a group of migrant labourers in Solan district, killing five and injuring four. Road accidents per 10,000 vehicles in the hill state was 17.1 per cent as compared to the national average of 15.1 per cent in 2019, while the number of accidental deaths per 10,000 vehicles was seven per cent compared to 5.1 per cent at the national level, the police data stated. Pedestrians were hit in 22 per cent cases of accidents in the state, while head-on collision and cases of vehicles veering off the road accounted for 22 per cent accidents each, it stated. More than 80 per cent of accidents were reported in rural areas, according to an analysis of the police data for the last six years. The highest number of acciden

Polling personnel killed, 12 others injured in Nagaland accident

One polling personnel was killed and 12 others were injured when the vehicle in which they were travelling met with an accident near Thillong bridge in Doyang. The polling officials were on their way to Sungro for election duty in the Sungro sector of the Sanis Assembly constituency, according to officials.The apparent cause of the accident seems to be a mechanical failure. The injured people have been transported to the District Hospital Wokha.A new team of polling personnel along with polling materials/machinery from the reserve polling personnel have been dispatched from the Wokha headquarters.EVM machines will be replaced from the reserve if required, said Deputy Commissioner & District Election Officer, Wokha Ajit Kumar Ranjan.Nagaland along with Meghalaya is scheduled to go for polls on Monday, February 27.

Polling officials injured in road accident in West Garo Hills in Meghalaya

One of them is seriously injured while the others sustained minor injuries

Drivers under 40 responsible for more than 65% of road accidents in HP

Drivers below 40 years of age were involved in 65 per cent of all road accidents in the past 70 months, most of them caused by speeding and dangerous driving, police here said on Thursday. Over 6,250 people lost their lives while around 25,000 received injuries in over 15,600 road accidents in the past five years and ten months (from 2017 till Oct 2022), according to the police data. About 26 per cent of these accidents took place during 6 pm to 9 pm and the maximum cases of pedestrians being hit by vehicles were reported in the plain areas of Baddi, Una, and Poanta Sahib. The data was shared during a three-day-long training for Traffic, Tourist and Railways police held here in which 35 investigation officers participated, a release issued said. The participants were trained on several subjects including collection of digital evidence, knowledge about new electronic gadgets, the Motor Vehicle Act, and traffic rules.