There has been a noticeable decline of 12.60% in road accident fatalities in the January-May 2022 period in Kerala, as compared to the same period in 2019.
The total number of fatalities in the State during the period fell from 2,127 in 2019 to 1,859 in 2022. “Considering the trend during the first five months, we hope that the fatality rate in the entire 2022 can be reduced by at least 10%,” said T. Elangovan, Executive Director of Kerala Road Safety Authority (KRSA).
He attributed the high telephone and road connectivity (Kerala has 548 km of roads per 100 sq km area), improved response time of ambulances (the average being 20 minutes), availability of quality medical care and better rule enforcement as among the reasons for the decline in road accident fatalities in the first five months of the year.
“Efforts are under way to further reduce the response time of ambulance services to 15 minutes by networking private and public sector ambulances and by mapping of hospitals. Kerala is in the 19th position among the Indian States in the accident-fatality rate, although it has 450 vehicles per 1,000 people – comparable with 507 vehicles per 1,000 people in the U.S. The noticeable fall in the fatality rate is pertinent, especially since the number of vehicles in the State has been increasing by over 10% every year,” said Mr. Elangovan.
Among the five months, the decline in fatalities was steepest in January (17.40%) when the number fell to 379 from 459 registered during January 2019.
Interestingly, the accident rate saw a marginal increase of 0.9% in January-May 2022 as compared to in 2019, rising from 18,143 to 18,307. It, however, fell 8.7% to 3,356 in February, as compared to 3,674 in February 2019.
Among districts, Wayanad recorded the maximum reduction of 29.30% in fatalities, with the number of road accident deaths falling from 41 to 29 for the period. The fatalities in Ernakulam – which records the maximum number of accident deaths – fell 11.20%, from 232 to 206.
Kottayam recorded a 15.70% fall in accidents, from 1,213 to 1,023 – the maximum among districts, even as Kannur saw a 25.7% increase, with accidents also increasing from 945 to 1,188. The number of accidents in Thiruvananthapuram fell from 2,345 to 2,063, a 12% decline.
2021 figures
The relatively-low fatality figure of 1,573 recorded for the first five months in 2021 too is significant, but for the fact that pandemic curbs were still in vogue during that year. There was a 19% reduction in road accidents and a 23% fall in fatalities in 2021, as compared to the base year of 2019.
