NEW DELHI:
Punjab recorded a more than ten-fold increase in road crashes due to drunk driving in 2019 as compared to the previous year while Bihar reported “zero” road mishaps on this account, Road Transport Minister
Nitin Gadkari informed the Rajya Sabha on Monday.
In a written reply, the minister said while 14,071 road accidents caused due to drunk driving were reported across the country in 2017, it had reduced to 12,018 during 2018.
But last year, it increased marginally to 12,256. Among all the states and UTs, Uttar Pradesh had maximum such accidents at 4,496 in 2019 followed by 1,290 in Punjab. A year back, Punjab had reported only 112 such cases. Delhi recorded 215 such accidents in 2019.
Data show that the number of accidents due to drunk driving came down drastically since the state implemented complete prohibition. While in 2016, a total of 593 such cases were reported, there was not a single such accident in 2017. In 2018, it reported 10 such accidents and last year, no accident due to drunk driving was registered in the state again. The transport ministry is yet to publish the road accident report of 2019.
For years, questions have been raised over India’s road accident data attributed to drunk driving considering that there is no proper recording of such cases.
However, the road transport ministry has taken the initiative to collect accurate road crash data and other inputs from the spot. The Integrated Road Accident Database Project (iRAD) will be implemented first in six states of Maharashtra,
Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and
Tamil Nadu. The iRAD App is being customised to enable police, transport and health department officials to use their mobile phones to collect the road crash data.
Subsequently, this project will be rolled out across the country in phases.