Even standing in 2019, we cannot declare our
roads as safe. Is it what we want for ourselves and for our next generations?
Every time we are out of our houses and we drive, ride, or even walk on roads,
we feel scared. This is because India has the most dangerous city roads and
dangerous highways in the world.
Our country’s population in 2019 has
crossed 135 crores approx., among which almost 4000 cities in India has a
population of around 1 lakh. But every year we are losing our population by 1.3
lakhs approx. That means we are losing one city every year. This has been an
alarming situation for us for a couple of years. Most importantly, this count
is only of road accidents.
If you compare the number of road accidents
of 10 years span like from 2005 to 2015, you will see there has been an
increase of 70 thousand accidents every year. I am not quoting it; the
statistics show this figure. It has been seen that each year has experienced
480 thousand accidents on an average.
Similarly, the number of fatalities has
also increased within the time span. In all over the world, more than 1.25
million deaths occur each year due to road traffic crashes, among which more than
2 lakhs happens here. This number is increasing by almost 54% in every decade.
It has been noticed that though there was
lesser number of road accidents in our country in 2017 as compared to 2015 and
2016, the number of injured people had increased drastically. One of alarming
facts is that our own Delhi was ranked as the most dangerous city in India and
ranked 11th in the world, in terms of maximum number of accidents,
injuries, and fatalities.
These facts and figures are so horrifying
and shocking, that it is hard to imagine where we are heading forward. These
statistics not only reveal the truth that our roads are not at all safe, they
are actually very dangerous. But we need to find better ways to deal with these
issues.
In 2019, the Ministry of Road Transport
& Highways, Govt. of India has announced the observance of 30th Road Safety
Week Campaign. Every year the Road
Safety Week is celebrated with a specified theme. Like in 2019, the theme of
the campaign was “Sadak Suraksha – Jeevan Raksha”. This is really an
appreciable approach taken by the Government of India every year to increase
awareness, bring safety and save the lives of all innocents.
But, the Government of India is not the
sole responsibility for road safety measures. We all need to take significant
actions to reduce these numbers and make our country a safe place to live and
safe roads to travel.
To learn how to remain safe on Indian
roads, you can refer to my next blog!
