The national capital recorded the highest number of fatalities in traffic accidents among 53 metropolitan cities, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report Crime in India 2024.
As per the report, a total of 73,426 traffic accidents were reported in 53 cities during 2024 that caused injuries to 63,519 persons and 17,797 deaths.
The report highlighted that the maximum fatalities in traffic accidents were reported in Delhi at 2,181 deaths followed by Jaipur which recorded 1,001 deaths and Bengaluru 894 deaths.
The NCRB report highlighted that road accidents accounted for 97 per cent of total traffic-related accidents in 53 mega cities during 2024. Delhi accounted for 7.8 per cent of total road accidents, followed by Bengaluru 6.7 per cent and Hyderabad 5.3 per cent.
The report also mentioned that cause-wise analysis of road accidents, including unmanned railway crossing, revealed that most of road accident deaths in 53 mega cities were due to speeding which accounted for 52.8 per cent of total deaths due to road accidents during 2024.
It also mentioned that dangerous or careless driving, overtaking, etc., also caused 30.1 per cent of total deaths due to road accidents. Driving under influence of drug, alcohol had caused 2.6 per cent (411 deaths) of fatalities in road accidents.
Among these cities, most of fatalities due to driving under influence of drug, alcohol were reported in Agra that recorded 73 out of 411 deaths.
Place of occurrence-wise deaths in road accidents reveals that most of the fatalities due to road accidents have taken place near residential area, contributing 32.6 per cent (5,194 deaths) of deaths, followed by 8.1 per cent (1,291 deaths) near recreation place, cinema hall and 7.4 per cent near schools/colleges/other educational institutions (1,181 out of 15,956) deaths.
Among these cities, Ahmedabad (180 deaths) reported maximum cases of road accidents at pedestrian crossing, followed by Delhi (147 deaths).
As per road-wise classification of road accidents, 17.8 per cent of the total road accidents in the mega cities were reported at the National Highways.
Moreover, 25.4 per cent of the fatalities in road accidents were reported at the National Highways during 2024, the report stated.
As per the NCRB data, a total of 1,988 ‘railway accidents’ and ‘incidents on railway tracks/in railway premises’ were reported in these mega cities wherein Delhi (933) has reported maximum incidents by contributing 46.9 per cent of total accidents during 2024.
