Comparison of Road Traffic Crash Scenario in Mega, Medium and Small Sized Indian Cities (Paper 680)

The burden of Road Traffic Injuries in India has been rising as the number of deaths has more than doubled from 1991 through 2011. Thus it is imperative that the issues are figured out at the root level so that timely actions can be taken to avoid worsening the scenarios. The paper examines the immensity of the problem of road safety in small sized Indian cities of Patiala and Rajpura by computing the risk to personal safety of an individual and risk of motor vehicles involvement in fatal crashes. Further, it assesses the traffic safety scenario in mega, medium and small sized Indian cities by comparing the modal share of fatalities from the fatal road traffic crash data. The study concludes that the individual relative risk to personal safety is greater in Rajpura but the relative risk of vehicle occupant fatality is higher in Patiala. Comparing the traffic safety scenario in all sized Indian cities it has been found that the pedestrian fatalities increases and MTW fatalities decrease with the increase in city size. It has been observed that the average pedestrian fatalities in mega-sized Indian cities are 2 times higher than the small sized cities. The average MTW fatalities in small, medium and megacities account for 48%, 39% and 28% of the total fatalities respectively. The high proportion of MTW fatalities in small cities is possibly because the proportion of MTW ownership is higher in smaller cities than in megacities. The underlying reasons for such trends require further research.