Cyrus Mistry’s car accident highlights the dangers of India’s ‘Third World’ road conditions

A record 155,000 people were killed in road accidents in 2021, according to India’s National Crime Records Bureau

With a mere 1 per cent of the world’s vehicles, India accounts for about 10 per cent of all crash-related deaths, according to the World Bank

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Cyrus Mistry, the former chairman of Indian conglomerate Tata Sons, died in a road accident on Sunday after his car crashed into a road divider on a bridge in western India. He was 54. Photo: AP

Published: 8:32pm, 6 Sep 2022

The tragic death of Indian billionaire and industrialist Cyrus Mistry in a car accident on Sunday has once again highlighted the dangers of driving on India’s roads, where tens of thousands of people die each year.

Mistry, 54, was travelling to Mumbai from Gujarat with three others when his Mercedes-Benz SUV rammed into the divider on a bridge over the Surya river in Maharashtra’s Palghar.

According to a senior Mumbai police official, the area is “highly prone” to accidents because three lanes merge into two. “We see three-to-four major accidents every year here and it may be declared as a ‘black spot’ soon to warn future drivers,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

With a mere 1 per cent of the world’s vehicles, India accounts for about 10 per cent of all crash-related deaths, according to the World Bank. A record 155,000 people were killed in road accidents in 2021, according to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data.

That averages out to 426 daily fatalities or 18 deaths every single hour. A third of India’s crashes take place on its national highways such as the one Mistry was travelling on. In 2021 alone, 53,615 people died on these highways.

Besides the fatalities, 371,000 people were also injured in 403,000 road accidents’ across the country last year, showed an NCRB study “Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India 2021”.