Over 1.32 Lakh Deaths on National Highways Since 2023: Govt

Moneylife Digital Team 23 July 2025

Economy & Nation

India’s national highways have claimed more than 1.32 lakh lives in road accidents since 2023, according to a reply tabled in the Rajya Sabha by Union minister for road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari. The government admitted that despite deploying artificial intelligence (AI)-based surveillance and fixing thousands of accident-prone locations, fatalities on highways remain a major public safety concern.

Data from the government’s electronic detailed accident report (eDAR) portal shows that 53,372 people died on national highways in 2023, followed by 52,609 deaths in 2024, and 26,770 fatalities in just the first half of 2025. This grim tally of 132,751 deaths in 30 months underscores the deepening road safety crisis, especially on India's busiest and fastest road corridors.

Responding to questions raised by member of Parliament (MP) Dr Sasmit Patra, the minister stated that while blackspot identification and rectification is a continuous and high-priority task, several infrastructure and administrative bottlenecks continue to delay long-term fixes.

National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has so far, completed short-term safety measures at 8,542 blackspots and long-term remedial work at 3,144 locations. However, 3,322 blackspots identified by NHAI have been marked as not requiring structural upgrades, a claim likely to invite further scrutiny, Mr Gadkari added.

According to the minister, long-term measures such as road realignment, junction redesign, underpasses and overpasses often get delayed due to challenges like land acquisition, forest clearances, and utility shifting. "These delays continue to leave many high-risk zones vulnerable to repeat accidents."

To modernise enforcement, the government said it has made electronic monitoring of highways a statutory requirement under Section 136A of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988. Rules issued in August 2021 mandate such monitoring on high-risk and high-traffic corridors across national and state highways and in cities with populations over 1mn (million), or those covered by the national clean air programme (NCAP).

The advanced traffic management system (ATMS) has now been deployed on key corridors such as the Delhi–Meerut Expressway, Eastern Peripheral Expressway, Trans-Haryana Expressway, and parts of the Delhi–Mumbai Expressway. These systems include AI-based video incident detection and enforcement systems (VIDES), high-definition video surveillance, and integration with e-challan APIs and public-facing apps like NHAI One and Rajmarg Yatra.

Yet, the ground reality paints a complex picture. While the technological systems are in place on newer expressways, much of India’s existing highway network, where the majority of crashes occur, still lacks robust monitoring and enforcement. The reply clarified that ATMS systems are being installed in new highway projects by default, but in older corridors, they are being added only as stand-alone projects, often subject to Budgetary constraints and local approvals.

Experts have long warned that while technology and enforcement can reduce violations, they cannot replace the need for comprehensive infrastructure upgrades and behavioural change campaigns. The high number of fatalities suggests that over-speeding, lane indiscipline and lack of pedestrian and driver education remain unaddressed in many areas, despite policy-level interventions.

As India aims for its ambitious target to reduce road accident deaths by 50% by 2030 under the UN’s 'decade of action for road safety', the current figures and government disclosures in Parliament highlight how far the country still has to go and how urgently further intervention is needed.

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