As Number of Vehicles in Madhya Pradesh Increase, Road Accidents Show Minor Downtrend: Police Report

Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh, which nationally reports a high number of road accidents, has managed to decrease its average road mishap numbers between 2016 and 2018.

A 2018 report by Madhya Pradesh Police that was recently released, states that while the number of vehicles in the state surged from 2016 to 2018 by around 38 lakh, mortalities due to road accidents shrunk. From the earlier average of 80.86 deaths per one lakh vehicles, numbers have reduced to 72.93 fatalities between 2016 and 2018.

The growth of automobiles of all types in the state has been phenomenal since 2002; when the state had barely over one lakh vehicles. In the year 2018, the Transport Department had recorded a total of 1.28 crore vehicles.

Madhya Pradesh had shared the fifth place among states reporting the highest number of road accidents with mortalities between 2016 and 2018. The report states that while 29 persons lose their lives in 141 fatal accidents in a year, 150 are injured in these mishaps.

Between 2017 and 2018, road accidents decreased by 3.7 per cent, and the number of injured people reduced by 0.5%. However, the mortalities rose by 5.2%.

A Bhopal police official said that many measures had been regularly employed to decrease road-accident fatalities. These include use of breath analysers to check drunken driving; eye check-up camps for drivers of heavy vehicles and encouraging use of helmets through punitive actions and awareness drives.

However, overall fatalities in the state are still a cause of worry as deaths in last three years have shown upward rise with a nominal rate, suggests the report. Compared to the 9,646 people who died in the state in 2016, 10,177 lost their lives in 2017 and a total of 10,706 died in 2018.