Delhi's Killer Roads Claim Five Lives Every Day: Report

New Delhi: The latest figures released by the Centre of Science and Environment (CSE) reveal a grim picture as far as India's Road Safety is concerned.

There are 16 deaths and 58 road accidents every hour in India but the worst performer is the national capital. Delhi records five deaths every day - four of these are pedestrians and two wheeler riders. Violations of traffic rules are also rampant in Delhi - 3,29,000 cases of signal jumps, over 14,000 cases of drunken driving and 45,158 cases of speeding.

While 40 per cent victims nationally are youth, walkers and cyclists are the most vulnerable anywhere in the world. But in Delhi it's a staggering 44 per cent. 51 per cent of the fatalities that occurred in road crashes in Delhi between 2006 and 2009 involved pedestrians.

So why are the cyclists and pedestrians the most vulnerable? "99 per cent of the people we surveyed said that they were not comfortable crossing roads, they always felt unsafe," said Anjalee Agarwal, Executive Director, National Centre of Accessible Environment, NGO for rights of disabled.

Sunita Narain of CSE said "need better road engineering, better policing and surveillance. Our licensing policy needs to change, we need to make sure defaulters are punished. We need to recognise the rights of cyclists and pedestrians-which is in law as guidelines, but the guidelines are at best voluntary."

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The Delhi traffic police has also identified the city's top accident prone zones. The maximum accidents occur in north-west district followed by south-west and west districts - together these account for 60 per cent of accidents in the city. These include Narela, Punjabi Bagh, Shahdara, Model Town, Lajpat Nagar, Ashok Vihar, Kalkaji and Kalyanpuri. A majority of accidents occur on signal free arterial roads; only eight roads account for three-fourths of the accidents - Ring Road, Outer Ring Road, GT Karnal Road, Rohtak Road, GT Road, NH-24, NH-8 and Mathura Road.