Delhi recorded the highest number of road crash fatalities in 2023, with 1,457 deaths from 5,834 road accidents, making it the worst-affected city for two years in a row, according to the latest annual country-wide road accident data published by the Union ministry of road transport and highways.
Bengaluru saw 915 fatalities, which also made it the second-worst-affected city in the country for successive years, and saw a spike in road crash deaths of 19.5% from 772 such deaths recorded in 2022, while deaths in Delhi saw a fractional improvement.
Data showed even the third and fourth worst-affected cities in terms of road crash deaths—Jaipur and Kanpur—continued to hold on to their unenviable positions from 2022. The number of deaths in Jaipur jumped more than 10% to 849 from 765 in 2022, while in Kanpur, the number of deaths in 2023 and 2022 were 638 and 640, respectively. Collectively, million-plus cities accounted for 16.9% of all road accidents in the country and 10% of total fatalities, underscoring their disproportionate share in the national road safety burden.
The top 10 cities together accounted for 41.1% of road accident deaths in all 50 million-plus cities in 2023.
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Across all million-plus cities, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways’ report shows a total of 81,144 accidents in 2023, a jump of 5.7% from 76,752 in 2022 which is more than the all-India increase of 4.2%. 10 cities comprising Delhi, Bengaluru, Jabalpur, Chennai, Indore, Mallapuram, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Bhopal, Kochi accounted for 45.66% of the total road accidents of 50 million-plus cities. Similarly, growth of injury registered an increase of 6.4 %, which is more than the all-India increase of 4.4% recorded in 2023 over 2022. Accident Severity of million-plus cities had decreased to 21.3 in 2023 from 22.3 in 2022, which aligns with the National Accident Severity reduction from 36.5 in 2022 to 36 in 2023, the report said.
Two-wheelers (48.6%) accounted for the highest share of total accidents that occurred in million-plus cities in 2023 followed by pedestrians (23.7%), car/taxi/van and LVMs (11.7%), and autorickshaws accounted for (4.5%).
