NEW DELHI, June 18 (Xinhua) -- India's Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari has said the federal government has set a target to reduce road accident deaths by 50 percent by 2024 in the South Asian country.
Gadkari made the remarks on Thursday when addressing a virtual session organized by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) on the corporate role in arresting road fatalities in India.
"Presently we have around 150,000 deaths every year in road accidents, we have five lakh (half a million) accidents in a year," he said. "Fifty percent of the road accidents are due to road engineering problems."
"Government's target is to reduce road accident deaths by 50 percent by 2024," Gadkari said.
The minister emphasized the need to locate the accident-prone black spots on roads across India.
Gadkari also said that the World Bank and Asian Development Bank have already sanctioned a scheme by which the Indian government is allocating funds to stakeholders to remove the black spots.
Gadkari said his ministry is striving hard to reduce road accident deaths by improving the road safety in India with measures including strengthening the road and automobile engineering and public education.
Deadly road accidents are common in India and often blamed on overloading, bad condition of roads and reckless driving. Enditem
