Owing to lack of pedestrian infrastructure, Bengaluru accounts for 9 percent of the road fatalities in Karnataka, which is the fourth highest number of fatalities among all cities in India in 2014, says a WHO report on road deaths.
Times of India reported that 720 persons died in road accidents in Bengaluru, bringing the city to the fourth position among the top 10 cities. The report was brought out by Savelife Foundation, a Delhi-based NGO that analyzed the WHO Global Status Report on Road Safety 2015, on Monday.
It collated data from the National Crime Records Bureau's findings in the report ‘Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India 2014’.
According to a WHO report, India saw 1.37 lakh road deaths, out of which 10,444 persons died in road accidents in the state in 2014. The report said that, every day an average of 29 people lose their lives in road accidents in Karnataka. With 43,694 accidents, the state ranks third in number of accidents and second in terms of persons injured in road accidents.
According to Bengaluru traffic police, the city accounts for 13% of the total road accidents and 9% of deaths in the state. In 2014, 5,004 accidents left 4,098 persons injured in the city, said TOI report.
Maximum fatalities was seen by Delhi (1,332), followed by Chennai (1,046) and Jaipur (844).
Shaji Cherian, Director (Operations), Savelife Foundation (SF), said that underreporting of road deaths and lack of immediate medical services is a key challenge faced in India. Less than 50 percent of victims had immediate access to ambulances after an accident.
The WHO report also points to drunk driving as the reason for 4.7% of the road deaths.
The newspaper reported that about 55,138 cases of drunk driving in 2014 and 37,868 cases up to September 2015 have been registered with the Bengaluru Traffic Police.
TOI quoted Cherian as saying, “Here, we do not have a trauma registry to record the number of accidents that have led to disability. We don't even track fatalities in cases where the victim dies in hospital.The only data we get is through FIRs but that's not enough since all accidents aren't reported. This is why the number of deaths in the WHO report is 40% higher than the NCRB figure.”
This is an aggregated report from the Times of India.