Road accidents have claimed 43,000 lives and left 57,684 people grievously injured in the past one decade, the Odisha Assembly was informed on Friday.

In response to a query in the House, State Transport Minister Nrusingha Charan Sahu said as many as 43,312 people lost their lives in accidents between 2008 and September 2018, while the average annual road accident deaths crossed 4,000 after 2013.

A whopping 1,04,713 accidents took place during the decade. According to statistics furnished by the Minister, accident fatalities have been on the rise since the past three years despite the government claiming to have taken up coercive and awareness programmes to bring down road deaths.

While 4,790 people succumbed to injuries in accidents in 2017, the State has already lost 3,817 people till September this year.

Recently, a SC-appointed committee had expressed displeasure over poor implementation of road safety measures in Odisha. It had pointed out that there was a 3% reduction of road-related fatalities in 2017 over 2016 in the whole country, whereas Odisha recorded an increase of 327 deaths (7.3%) during the corresponding period.