PIB News Update: Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Shri Nitin Gadkari has informed that The Ministry of Road Transport & Highways analyses the road accidents on the basis of data provided by the Department of Police of the States/UTs. Accordingly, total fatalities in road accidents in the country during the last three years are as under:
| Years | Number of persons killed in road accidents |
| 2016 | 1,50,785 |
| 2017 | 1,47,913 |
| 2018 | 1,51,417 |
The estimates of WHO are at variance with actual figures. However, the estimates of WHO does not indicate the actual number of fatalities due to road accidents as their estimates are based on statistical projection and several other factors. Some of the factors are total population of the country, total number of vehicles per 1000 person, total roads (km) per 1000 hectares, maximum national speed limited on rural and urban roads (km/hour), health system access available, alcohol apparent consumption, working population, percentage of total vehicles that are motorbikes, control of corruption index, existence of national policies that encourage walking and / or cycling, etc.
To review the existing road accident data collection / reporting format so as to make recording and reporting of road accident data more accurate, objective and ensuring coverage of all relevant information, a Committee was constituted consisting experts from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, IIT Kharagpur, World Health Organization (WHO), senior officers from Police and Transport Departments of States, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare and officers of the Ministry. On the basis of the recommendations of the Committee, a revised uniform road accident recording and reporting format has been adopted since calendar year 2017.