Nitin Gadkari Warns: 20 People Die Every Hour In India’s Road Accidents

Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari has issued a stark warning over India’s road safety crisis, saying the country continues to lose an alarming number of lives in road accidents every year. Speaking at a road-safety event in the national capital on Monday, Gadkari said India records nearly five lakh road accidents annually and around 1.8 lakh deaths, describing the scale of fatalities as a national concern that demands urgent action.

Gadkari was speaking at the event organised by ICICI Lombard General Insurance as part of the company’s flagship corporate social responsibility initiative. Highlighting the human cost of road crashes, the minister said a large proportion of those killed are young people. According to figures cited by Gadkari, 66 per cent of people who die in road accidents are young, making road safety not only a transport issue but also a significant concern for the country’s working-age population and families.

The minister also highlighted the role of helmet use in preventing deaths among vulnerable road users. Gadkari said 54,132 people lost their lives last year because they were not wearing helmets. He further said two-wheeler riders account for 45 per cent of all road fatalities in India. The figures, he argued, underline the importance of basic road-safety measures and greater compliance with safety rules among motorists and passengers.

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Gadkari said the frequency of fatal road crashes has reached a level that should concern the entire country. “Every hour, 20 people die on our roads,” he said, stressing the scale of the loss. He compared the annual toll from road accidents with deaths caused by major crises such as war and disease, arguing that the country does not witness a comparable scale of deaths from those causes. His remarks were intended to draw attention to road accidents as a preventable public-safety crisis rather than treating them as isolated incidents.

The minister’s comments also put renewed focus on the factors that contribute to road fatalities, particularly among two-wheeler users. Helmets remain one of the most basic protective measures available to riders, and Gadkari’s reference to more than 54,000 deaths involving people who were not wearing helmets underlined the consequences of non-compliance. With two-wheeler users accounting for nearly half of all road fatalities, improving helmet use, enforcement and awareness could play an important role in reducing the number of deaths, alongside improvements in road engineering, vehicle safety and traffic management.

India’s road-safety challenge has remained a major public-policy issue because of the scale of accidents and the number of lives lost each year. Gadkari’s latest remarks highlight the urgency of addressing the problem through a combination of enforcement, safer driving practices, better infrastructure and greater public awareness. The minister’s statistics also point to the disproportionate impact on young people and two-wheeler riders. With nearly five lakh accidents and about 1.8 lakh deaths cited annually, the message from the road-safety event was clear: reducing fatalities will require sustained action from government agencies, road users, vehicle manufacturers and the wider public.

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