A preliminary probe into the deaths of former Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry and a co-passenger has revealed that not “wearing seat belts, over-speeding and error of judgment” resulted in the fatal car crash in Maharashtra’s Palghar district on Sunday.
Prima facie, the Mercedes was speeding and covered a distance of 20 km in just nine minutes after crossing the Charoti check post in Palghar district, 120 km from Mumbai. The car hit a road divider on the bridge on the Surya river, killing Mistry (54) and Jahangir Pandole on the spot.
Mistry was returning to Mumbai from Ahmedabad when the tragedy struck at 2:30 pm. The car was driven by Mumbai-based gynaecologist Anahita Pandole (55). She and her husband, Darius Pandole, were seriously injured in the accident. Jahangir and Darius were brothers. Mistry and Jahangir were in the back seats, while Darius was in the front seat with Anahita, who was at the wheel, police said.
An analysis of National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) data shows that speeding kills one Indian every six minutes and injures one every two minutes. As per the data, 87,050 people, including 11,190 women and girls, were killed and 2,28,274 injured in India in speeding-related incidents last year.
Speeding emerged as the main cause of nearly 60% road accident cases in the country in 2021. “Majority (59.7%) of road accidents were due to over-speeding, accounting for 87,050 deaths and 2,28,274 persons injured,” the report says. A total of 2,40,828 cases of over-speeding were recorded in 2021.
Worryingly, fatalities related to over-speeding instances rose 18.8% in 2021 compared to the year before that. Casualties in road accidents caused by factors other than speeding saw an increase too.
“The Bureau has made an effort to capture comprehensive information on road accidents using the revised proformae (sic) and published the first report for the year 2014 and this edition is eighth in the series. A total of 4,03,116 road accident cases were reported during 2021,” the report says.
While road accident cases in the country increased from 3,54,796 in 2020 to 4,03,116 in 2021, fatalities increased by 16.8% (from 1,33,201 in 2020 to 1,55,622 in 2021).
“It is observed that the rate of deaths per thousand vehicles has increased from 0.45 in 2020 to 0.53 in 2021,” NCRB data says.
In the 4,03,116 road accidents recorded in India in last year, as many as 1,55,622 people died while 3,71,884 were injured.
In Mizoram, Punjab, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, fatalities in road accidents outnumbered the count of people who survived with injuries.
In Mizoram, 64 road accidents caused 64 deaths and injured 28 people in 2021. In Punjab, 6,097 road accidents caused 4,516 deaths and injured 3,034 people. In Jharkhand, 4,728 road accidents caused 3,513 deaths and injured 3,227. In Uttar Pradesh, 33,711 road accidents caused 21,792 deaths and injured 19,813 people.
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