While the number of fatal accidents in the country has been holding steady at an average of 1.48 lakh cases every year, Mumbai has seen a 22% decline in such casualties between 2015 and 2018, traffic police chief Madhukar Pandey said on Thursday.
Mr. Pandey made the observation at a press conference to announce the findings of the Mumbai Road Safety Annual Report 2018. The study, undertaken every year in collaboration with Bloomberg Philanthropies: Initiative for Global Road Safety, maps trends in road accidents and their causes.
Refusing to call them ‘accidents’, Dr. Sara Whitehead, public health and preventive medicine consultant, Vital Strategies, U.S.A. said, “Road traffic crashes are not accidents. They are preventable, and the information in this report shows where and for whom prevention efforts need to be targeted so that fewer Mumbaikars die on the roads.”
Dr. Whitehead was one of the consultants that worked on the study for Bloomberg.
According to the report, the city witnessed 611 deaths in road accidents in 2015, but only 475 in 2018. The report also says pedestrians, motorcyclists and cyclists made up for 93% of the road crash deaths in the city.
‘Pedestrians hit most’
Pedestrians continue to be the most affected, comprising 51% (243 out of 475) of the deaths in 2018. Apart from the 475 people who lost their lives in 2018 in preventable crashes, 3,292 were injured.
Dr. Whitehead said, “Men and young men are especially at risk in motorcycle crashes, and if we look at the age of pedestrians who die on the streets, older people are particularly affected. This tells us that we need to make the structure safer and better for people who take a little bit longer to walk.”
The report, which analyses data collected between 2015 and 2018, also says males make up for the largest amount of perpetrators and victims of fatal crashes. It says 99% of the ‘at-fault’ drivers in road crash deaths have been males, and they account for 85% of the fatalities.
Mr. Pandey said the police are trying to achieve solutions through three ways. “Firstly, through enforcements, especially for four issues — driving without helmet, drunk driving, driving without seat belt and over-speeding. Secondly, we are offering design solutions with the help of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to segregate pedestrian and vehicular movement. Thirdly, by spreading awareness and communicating with the public through social media, like our Twitter handle.”
The report also highlighted that Western Express Highway continues to be a high-risk location with the highest number of fatalities (52), followed by Eastern Express Highway (34) and SV Road (16) in 2018.
