Nearly 92% of all road deaths in India in 2024 were due to negligence, when the India Crime Report 2024, released on Wednesday, and road accident casualty data presented by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways in Parliament in December 2025 are read together. This also means that the marginal improvement in the share of road deaths attributable to negligence in 2023 has been reversed in 2024. In 2023, nearly 91% of all road deaths in India in 2023 were due to negligence, an improvement from 92% in 2022.
While a National Crime Records Bureau report released on Wednesday said deaths due to negligence linked to road accidents rose to 162,500 (daily average 445) in 2024, the number of recorded road accident deaths reached 177,177 (daily average 485) according to a response in Parliament by the union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH). The same response stated that India’s road accident fatality rate per thousand population is 11.89 compared to 4.3 in China and 12.76 in the United States, according to World Road Statistics 2024.
Likewise, the India Crime Report 2023 and the ‘Road Accidents in India’ report put the number of deaths due to road accidents at 157,831 (daily average of 432) and 172,890 (daily average of 474), respectively. In 2022, the Ministry of Health and Development recorded 168,491 deaths in road accidents (daily average of 462) and the National Off-Road Council recorded 155,622 deaths due to negligence related to road accidents (daily average of 426).
In 2024, the majority of road accidents (61.2%) were due to excessive speed, accounting for 1,01,649 deaths and 2,83,162 people injured, said the report ‘Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India 2024’ (separate from the Crime in India Report) released by NCRB on the same day.
Dangerous/reckless driving or overtaking contributed to 26% of road accidents, which caused 46,132 deaths and 1,12,504 injuries, and 2.1% of road accidents were due to bad weather conditions.
The report also said that rural areas accounted for the majority of accidents (59.7%) compared to urban areas (40.3%). It is worth noting that 31.2% of all road accidents were reported near residential areas.
The eastern Indian states of West Bengal, Bihar and Odisha recorded the highest number of deaths in road accidents due to negligence at 11,975, 10,309 and 5,079 cases, respectively.
The same report said that cyclists and pedestrians are the most vulnerable road users in India, collectively accounting for 63% of all road deaths in 2024. This finding is consistent with MoHP data in recent years. Two-wheelers accounted for the highest number of road deaths nationally at 84,599 (48.3% of all road deaths) and injuries at 2,23,652 people (49.9% of all road injuries).
Pedestrians constituted the second largest group of victims in road accidents, with 25,769 deaths (14.7% of total road accident deaths) and 53,370 injuries (11.9% of total road injuries). Ahmedabad (180 deaths) and Delhi (147 deaths) had the highest rate of deaths at pedestrian crossings among major cities, while 6.1% of all road accidents in urban areas occurred specifically at pedestrian crossings.
The causal breakdown of the Ministry of Health and Population data for 2024 has not yet been announced.
