Kerala has the highest percentage of elderly people falling victim to road accidents in the country.
According to the statistics available with the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, Kerala ranks 16th in terms of the total number of fatalities in road accidents in the country from 2013 to 2022 with 40,389 deaths.
However, fatalities classified according to different age groups reveal that 6,604 people above the age of 60 years died in road accidents in Kerala between 2016 and 2022, while the total death toll in accidents in the State was 28,648 during this period.
This age category constitutes 23.05% of the total accident deaths, the highest in the country, while the national average is 8.88%. Haryana comes second, with the victims in this age category constituting 19.32%.
The State-wise accident data put Uttar Pradesh top of the list with 1,97,283 deaths during the 10-year period. However, elderly people constitute only 8.05% of the total deaths.
In Tamil Nadu, 14.37% of the total victims are elderly people, while it’s 6.27% in Karnataka. A report, ‘road accidents in India 2022’ presented in Parliament, identifies pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists as the most vulnerable groups, accounting for a large proportion of road traffic deaths.
A host of issues, including human error, poor road conditions, environmental issues, adverse weather, and vehicular condition, contribute to the rising number of road accidents in the country.
However, the high elderly representation in road accident causalities in Kerala is due to different reasons. In Kerala, each minor accident is recorded officially due to high literacy, although this is not the case with many northern Indian States. Besides this, the representation of elderly people using roads, as passengers, vehicle riders, and pedestrians, is higher in Kerala than in the country as a whole, says Samson Mathew, Director, National Transportation Planning and Research Centre.
Published – December 14, 2024 09:03 pm IST
