Potholes: Death Traps on Roads

Lives lost

- VISMAY BASU @ New Delhi

The torrential downpour is throwing road traffic out of gear. Reports of stodgy, grid-locked vehicular movements have been hitting the headlines countrywide. Waterlogging, choked drains, flash floods, and cratered roads slow traffic to a standstill. Yet, the misery of congestion pales in comparison to the deeper menace: the rain does not just delay—it kills.

Official data from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) reveals a grim picture. Pothole-related crashes, a category tracked separately in the annual Road Accidents in India reports, have claimed thousands of lives in the past decade. In 2017 alone, 9,423 such accidents left 3,597 people dead and over 25,000 injured. Though the numbers dipped in 2018, the following years saw fluctuations rather than lasting improvements.