Road accidents claimed 7,219 lives in the State last year , reveals a recently released data by Ministry of Road Transport.
The data put out by the ministry suggests that road accidents involving both motorised and non-motorised vehicles numbered 22,811, which is among the highest in the country. More worrying is that the number has gone up since 2015. The number of deaths and those injured last year is also noticeably higher than that of the previous year.
A breakdown of the numbers suggests that over 700 deaths took place on 10,000 km of roads in the State including highways, while nine lives are for every 10,000 vehicles on the roads.
In a surprising revelation, single-lane roads, where vehicular movement is generally slow, accounted for more than 10,000 accidents and 2,954 deaths; higher than roads with multiple lanes.
Deaths on normal roads without damages were 4,582, numbered higher than deaths on roads with potholes and non-topped roads. Potholes on State’s roads accounted for only 3 deaths in 2016, the data showed. This number is significantly lower than Telangana’s neighbouring states including Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra.
Over 2,400 people killed in fatal accidents were on a motorcycle, followed by those deaths that resulted in passengers of cars and other vehicles categorised as LMV. Six-hundred and nineteen killed were pedestrians.
The data presents a picture of concern as it suggest most accidents could have been prevented. Over 4,500 people were killed because of the driver’s fault which resulted in 16,108 accidents. Bad weather was not found to be a cause for concern as 6,269 were killed in 19,574 accidents that happened on a clear day.
On road locations that were most fatal, the data cautions that T-junctions witnessed more deaths than other type of junctions.
The data also shows little distinction between accidents in sparsely populated rural areas compared to cities with high vehicular density. In Telangana, urban areas witnessed 3,121 deaths in 12,208 accidents while 4,098 people lost their lives in rural areas due to 10,603 accidents.