Skies Clearer, Clouds on Ground

NE could be excused for being weighed down by a sustained spell of sadness on account of last week's pointless tragedy of an Air India flight crashing into a college hostel and killing more than 270 people in all.

- C P SURENDRAN

One supposes in the same breath that it's the essence of tragedies—their pointlessness; death without reason.

Despite the heavy toll and the sensational nature of the incident, the fact remains that air travel in India has been getting safer. According to the International Civil Aviation Organization, India recorded zero accidents per million departures for scheduled commercial flights in 2023, a marked improvement over the 0.87 accidents per million in 2022. Since 1947, commercial airline accidents in India have claimed a reported 2,173 lives in 52 fatal incidents, with 80 percent of those between 1951 and 2010 attributed to pilot error.

These numbers, however, pale against other types of accidents. Perhaps because we are congenitally more tolerant of chaos as a civilization, deaths from road accidents result in vast numbers of deaths. Tardy observance of traffic rules is only one factor. The state of the roads themselves is fatality-inducing.

Mind-numbing numbers of casualties are distributed across road traffic collisions, rail accidents, drownings, fires and industrial mishaps. Data from the National Crime Records Bureau paints a funereal picture. Road traffic collisions are the leading cause of accidental deaths in India, far surpassing others.

In 2023, an estimated 1,72,000 people died in road accidents, averaging 474 deaths per day. That's a lot. The NCRB reported a significantly lower number in some years prior, though. In 2021, for example, the number of fatalities was 1,55,622, with two-wheeler crashes accounting for 69,240 deaths.