Nine hundred and ninety-eight lives were lost to road accidents in Chennai last year. Half of them died before turning 45 years. Over 80% of them were men. Half of the victims were travelling on two-wheelers, with over 90% of them speeding or driving carelessly, leading to their deaths. One in five accidents happened in the late evening hours of 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. And they declined in the summer month of May when schools and colleges were closed.
Typically, a median road accident victim in Chennai is a middle-aged male who travels on a two-wheeler and carelessly drives or overtakes or is speeding, mostly in the late evening hours. The conclusions were drawn from the data in the National Crime Records Bureau’s Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India (ADSI) 2021 report.
The city witnessed 5,034 road accidents in 2021, the highest among 53 metropolitan cities analysed by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) with a population of 1 million or above. The accident count was 500 more than Delhi’s and 1,800 more than Bengaluru’s, the other cities in the top three list. In these accidents, 5,020 people were injured — the highest among all cities — and about 1,200 more than Delhi’s and 2,200 more than Bengaluru’s injured list. However, Delhi’s related fatalities of 1,172 were slightly higher than Chennai’s 998 — the second on the list.
