99 percent of Indian pedestrians are at a risk of injury, highlighting the need for road safety measures, as per a study conducted by Bosch. The supplier of technology and services released India’s first comprehensive study analysing pedestrian behaviour in India during the 7th UN Global Road Safety Week. The report also found that human error is the leading contributor to pedestrian accidents in India, followed by infrastructure and vehicle-related factors. 

It reveals that pedestrian crashes are a major safety concern in India, with about one in every ten traffic-related fatalities in the country being a pedestrian. In 2021, The Ministry of Road Transport & Highways (MoRTH) registered 68,053 pedestrian crashes in 2021, which contributed to 16.5% of the total accidents that year.

The report, based on the in-depth accident database of over 6300 cases of the Road Accident Sampling System for India (RASSI), reveals that pedestrian crashes are a significant safety concern in India.

It further states that every second pedestrian accident on rural roads contributes to pedestrian fatality. However, in urban and semi-urban areas, the fatality risk of pedestrians is relatively lower in comparison with rural roads. One unique behaviour in Indian accidents observed by the report is where close to 12% of pedestrians cross halfway and stop in the middle of the road to allow the vehicle to move on the other lane. In Western countries, the driver stops the vehicle and allows the pedestrian to cross and in India, the pedestrian stops and allows the vehicle to pass.

The report also reveals that daytime accidents are a bigger threat to Indian pedestrians than night-time accidents - 52% of accidents occur during the day.

There can be no “one reason” for pedestrian accidents. Each accident has multi-level contributing factors from either humans, infrastructure, and vehicles,  or all combined together. Human error contributed 91%, infrastructure 63 percent and vehicles 44 percent to accidents. All three factors shown contribute in one way or the other for the crash. In many cases, all three factors will be the major contributors. Hence a holistic approach to solving the problems must be established in order to mitigate pedestrian accidents.