33,853 people died on India's National Highways in just the first seven months of this year. That is roughly 161 lives every single day — more than six every hour, on the roads we were told were the safest the country had ever built.
Union Minister Nitin Gadkari placed these numbers before the Lok Sabha in a written reply, and they deserved more than a footnote. The Delhi–Mumbai Expressway — one of India's most ambitious infrastructure projects — recorded 133 deaths across 165 accidents in this period, while the Amritsar–Jamnagar Expressway witnessed 67 fatalities in 57 crashes. Two flagship corridors, two headline body counts.
The Expressway Paradox
Here is the uncomfortable arithmetic at the heart of this story: wider, faster, better-lit roads have not translated into safer ones. Between 2005 and 2023, road accidents in India rose by 10 per cent, but fatalities surged by over 80 per cent — meaning crashes are not more frequent so much as dramatically more lethal. Speed is the primary reason, and expressways are purpose-built for speed.
National Highways account for only about 2 per cent of India's total road network, yet they were the site of over 31 per cent of all accidents in 2021 and roughly 36 per cent of all fatalities. The concentration of death on such a sliver of the country's roads is a structural problem, not a behavioural coincidence.
A Decade of Rising Toll, One Tentative Turn
The ten-year arc has been mostly grim. The pandemic year of 2020 brought a brief dip — 1.33 lakh deaths nationally — driven by lockdowns, not safer roads. The moment restrictions lifted, the numbers climbed back. National highway fatalities were 63,112 in 2023 and rose further to 64,772 in 2024.
There is, however, one data point worth watching. Fatalities on national highways fell by 4 per cent to 62,122 in 2025 — the first decline since the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether that is a genuine inflection or a statistical ripple is unclear, especially since the total number of road accidents across the country actually rose by 5.30 per cent in 2025, claiming 1,83,382 lives — equivalent to around 21 deaths every hour.
Who Is Dying, and Why
The victim profile has barely changed. Sixty-six per cent of road deaths are among young people aged 18 to 34. These are India's workers, breadwinners, and students — the exact demographic that uses expressways most.
The government has identified 6,358 black spot corridors based on accident data from 2023 to 2025, using AI-based tools developed by IIT Kanpur. Advanced Traffic Management Systems are also being deployed on national highways with the stated aim of reducing accidents. The toolkit exists. The gap is in execution — and in recognising that engineering a road for 120 kmph means nothing if the rest of the ecosystem — emergency response, driver training, enforcement — runs at a fraction of that speed.
The 33,853 deaths in seven months are not an aberration. They are the predictable outcome of building world-class roads without yet building a world-class safety culture around them.
Sources
- Over 33,800 highway fatalities in 7 months: Govt - The Tribune
- The data behind India’s road carnage: Fatalities soar 80% in two decades despite only 10% rise in accidents
- national highways witnesses highest road accidents compared to state highwayshighways 1185871
- road mishaps killed 1 55l in 2021 the highest ever ncrb 428686
- Road Deaths on National Highways Fall 4% in 2025: Gadkari
- Dailypioneer
- December 18, 2025 2:11 PM