Road Safety in India: Status Report 2020 Unknown & other 5% Bus Truck 4% 11% Pedestrian 33% Car 7% Bicycle 6% MTW 34% May 2020 i Road Safety in India: Status Report 2020 Dinesh Mohan Geetam Tiwari Kavi Bhalla Transportation Research & Injury Prevention Programme Indian Institute of Technology Delhi MAY 2020 Acknowledgement This work has been partially supported by Tata Sons. Formatting and publication support Mahesh K. Gaur. Recommended citation Mohan, D., Tiwari, G. and Bhalla, K. (2020) Road Safety in India: Status Report 2019. New Delhi: Transportation Research & Injury Prevention Programme, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. www.iitd.ac.in/-tripp. Contents may be reproduced with attribution to the authors. © Transportation Research & Injury Prevention Programme (TRIPP) Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. CONTENTS Executive summary ............................................................................................................... i Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 National road traffic injury fatality rate ............................................................................. 1 Vehicle Population ........................................................................................................ 1 Road traffic crash and injury data in India ............................................................................ 3 Recording of crashes ......................................................................................................... 3 Reporting of RTI crash data ............................................................................................... 4 RTI fatality estimates ......................................................................................................... 4 Non-fatal injury estimates ................................................................................................. 5 Ranking in causes of death and population health............................................................. 7 International comparison .................................................................................................. 8 Data used In this report ..................................................................................................... 9 Injury and fatality data .................................................................................................. 9 Data from MoRTH reports ........................................................................................... 11 Summary ......................................................................................................................... 15 Analysis of data at national level ....................................................................................... 17 National fatality rates ...................................................................................................... 17 Estimates of modal share of RTI fatalities in India ........................................................... 18 Fatality distribution by age and sex ................................................................................. 20 State wise analysis .......................................................................................................... 21 Summary ......................................................................................................................... 24 Urban safety ....................................................................................................................... 27 City data .......................................................................................................................... 27 RTI details for selected cities ........................................................................................... 31 RTI victims and impacting vehicles .............................................................................. 31 Road traffic fatalities by type of road user and time of crash ....................................... 32 Road user risk analysis .................................................................................................... 32 Occupant risk per hundred thousand vehicles ............................................................. 33 Personal fatality risk per 10 million trips ...................................................................... 33 Fatalities associated with each vehicle type accounting for exposure .......................... 34 Conclusions from detailed city studies ......................................................................... 35 Summary ......................................................................................................................... 36 Intercity highways .............................................................................................................. 37 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 37 Crash patterns ................................................................................................................. 38 Other studies .................................................................................................................. 40 Summary ......................................................................................................................... 41 Status of research in road safety ........................................................................................ 43 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 43 Indian research output .................................................................................................... 44 Summary ......................................................................................................................... 45 International knowledge base ............................................................................................ 47 International knowledge base for control of road traffic injuries ..................................... 47 Results of systematic reviews .......................................................................................... 47 Legislation and enforcement ....................................................................................... 47 Education campaigns and driver education ................................................................. 48 Vehicle factors ............................................................................................................. 49 Environmental and infrastructure factors .................................................................... 49 Pre-hospital care ......................................................................................................... 49 Summary ......................................................................................................................... 50 Way forward ...................................................................................................................... 53 Practice points ................................................................................................................ 53 Pedestrian and bicyclist safety..................................................................................... 53 Motorcyclist and motor vehicle safety ......................................................................... 53 Road measures ............................................................................................................ 53 Enforcement ............................................................................................................... 53 Pre-hospital care, treatment and rehabilitation ........................................................... 54 Research agenda ......................................................................................................... 54 Institutional arrangements .............................................................................................. 54 References .......................................................................................................................... 58 Executive summary Road traffic crash and injury data • According to official statistics 1,51,417 persons were killed and 469,418 injured in road traffic crashes in India in 2018. However, this is probably an underestimate for injuries, as not all injuries are reported to the police. • The number of cars and motorised two-wheelers (MTW) registered in 2016 was 30.2 and 168.9 millions respectively. The official registration data over-represent the number of vehicles in actual operation because vehicles that go off the road due to age or other reasons are not removed from the records. The actual number of personal vehicles on the road is estimated to be 50%-60% of those mentioned in the records. • The extent of underreporting of road traffic deaths in India is not well understood. Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study, estimated that in 2017, 218,876 deaths (95% UI 201,734 to 231,141) due to road injuries occurred in India. A National Burden Estimates study estimates RTI deaths in 2017 in India to be 275,000. These two estimates are 45% and 82% higher than the MoRTH number. • Police data should not be used for studying the epidemiology of non-fatal road traffic injuries (RTI) in the country. The official estimate of non-fatal RTI