Deaths And Injuries Due To Road Accidents In New Delhi

Introduction

This problem description belongs to one of the top 3 goals of the United Nations Sustainable Development. Health and wellbeing have thirteen targets to ensure the healthy living and wellbeing of every individual of all ages. Our Problem directly links with the 3rd aim of United Nations Sustainable Development (Health and well-being) via target 3.6, which states that by 2020, halve the number of global deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents.

This issue is important and complex. So, we must deal with it in priority because it is related to problems like deaths or severe injuries. India is a country with booming economy and technological developments but has many problems, one of them is population burst which also results in vehicular traffic that further contributes to increasing road accidents in the country. Life is precious, and the loss of one loved result in a depression that also affects the 3rd goal of UN. According to Holly Prigerson, “Psychiatric disorders, such as major depression or PTSD, frequently follow the loss of someone dear”.

Global Problem (Background):

Road accidents are the top leading cause of death for children and young adults 5-29 of age and 8th leading cause of death for people of all ages. The UN goals are to reduce the number of global deaths and injuries by 50% no later than 2020, but the data from WHO Global status report on road safety 2015 shows that in 2015 number of death by road accidents was fairly constant from 2007 to 2013 that is 1.25 million and up to 50 million injuries and in 2017 report it was 1.35 million for 2016 and over 50 million injuries [3 pp. ix]. This data indicates that we are not moving in the right direction and far behind to achieve our target 3.6 by 2020 at this rate.

According to WHO, most of the road accidents are preventable. China and India are the two countries with more than 50000 deaths in road accidents with 261367 and 207551 respectively [5]. Road accidents are not only limited to drivers and passengers but also includes pedestrians. This factor also affects the United Nation goal 11 which is Sustainable Development and this is linked with target 11.2 which states about sustainable transport systems for all, improving road safety, etc. [6]. As we are in 2020 and UN 3.6 target seems to be unrealistic, it needs proper attention, solution and realistic time extension.

Road Accidents in New Delhi

There are only two countries that exceed the annual death rate of 50000 in a calendar year. “India, however ranks 1st in the number of road accident deaths across the 199 countries reported in the World Road Statistics, 2018 followed by China and US”. So, here we are focusing only on one city of India to develop a model to reduce the number of deaths by road accidents. Delhi is one of the metropolitan cities of India that include India's capital city New Delhi. This city has over 16.75 million people1 and a population density of 29,259 per square mile. This city has over 10.7 million registered vehicles with transport authority.

Most of these vehicles daily commute to India's capital city which is relatively small from Delhi with only 16.5 mi2 total area. This results in heavy traffic congestion and road accidents in the city. Total number of road accidents in Delhi was 6515 which killed almost 1690 people and results in contrast, Canada’s total population was roughly 33.48 million in the same year (2011) despite being nearly 6665 times larger than Delhi in terms of total area.

Total number of road accidents in Delhi was 6515 which killed almost 1690 people and results in 1657 fatal injuries in 2018 in contrast to 6673 accidents that ended 1584 human lives and injured 1565 citizens in 2017. Moreover, Accident Severity 2 kept increasing from 19.37 (2014) to 25.94 (2018)

Pedestrians are also at great risk in New Delhi. To cite, 775 pedestrians lost their lives and more than 2000 people involved in fatal injury accidents in 2018. There are many causes of this problem that has to be found and addressed properly to reduce and prevent these kinds of fatal accidents in order to achieve UN goals at least by the next deadline.

Primary Causes of Road Accidents

List of causes includes human error, mechanical faults, road infrastructure faults, environmental factors and other reasons. Most of the accidents occur due to human error and negligence with a staggering 97%. Speeding is the most dominant cause of road accidents which accounts for nearly 70% of all accidents followed by violating traffic rules and drunken drive respectively.

Looking at other reasons, one of the main reasons for the accidents is New Delhi’s total area and the number of vehicles commuting on a daily basis. Of course, we cannot change the size of the city and population or number of commuters within the city. Therefore, we need a better resource to handle this situation because we all know population growth is exponential and highly unpredictable. The number of vehicles is also directly linked with population growth.

It is also clear that we also have to upgrade the road infrastructure and mechanical system even though they only share a 2% in all road accidents but we cannot tolerate that infrastructure and mechanical faults could cost even a single life due to any engineering issues.

Conclusion

This problem has a much greater impact on United Nations Sustainable Goals because it not only has an impact on its parent goal category but it also influences other goals as well as the UN’s 11th goal. First of all, we have to re-plan each and everything from scratch because the goal set for 2020 seems to be unrealistic and most likely will fail to complete this target. So, we have to think out of the box to achieve this target otherwise we will miss our target again.