Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are studies in contrast while also being similar in many parameters. While Tamil Nadu is smaller in size, it has a larger population. While both have similar GDP, Tamil Nadu’s is more evenly distributed among its districts, while in Karnataka there is a wide gulf between Bengaluru Urban and the rest of the districts.

According to the 2011 census, Karnataka’s population stood at 6.1 Crore, which was 85% of Tamil Nadu’s population of 7.2 Crore. As of 2022-23, Karnataka had 2.98Cr vehicles against Tamil Nadu’s 3.4 Cr, or 87% of Tamil Nadu’s vehicle numbers.

However, in terms of the road accidents or crashes, and deaths reported by the respective Transport Departments for 2023, Tamil Nadu performs significantly worse than Karnataka.

While Karnataka had 64.6% of the road crashes in Tamil Nadu, when it comes to fatalities that percentage goes up only marginally to 67%. This means that even accounting for more diligent reporting of minor accidents, there is a significant difference in road safety between the two states.

District-wise Distribution

Karnataka

In Karnataka’s Road Accidents Report, the road crashes and deaths are split into City and district for most large cities like Belagavi, Mangalore, Mysore and Kalaburgi. This ends up spreading the data across 38 rows, masking any standout districts that could be a cause for concern. As there is no overlap between these numbers, for the sake of this analysis and for better comparison with Tamil Nadu, the city and the larger district numbers have been added together to get the numbers for the 31 districts. For e.g. Belagavi district numbers would be the sum of the Belagavi City numbers and Belagavi district numbers. Similarly Dakshina Kannada’s numbers would be the sum of Dakshina Kannada and Mangaluru City’s numbers.

In Karnataka, road crashes and deaths follow the same pattern of its development – concentrated around Bengaluru Urban. Interestingly, Belagavi shows up as the second largest epicentre for road crashes in Karnataka.

Road crash deaths also follow a mostly similar pattern, with the exception being that Belagavi had the highest number of road crash deaths in Karnataka, even more than Bengaluru Urban.

The 937 fatalities in Belagavi resulted from 2642 crashes, as against 915 from 4974 crashes in Bengaluru Urban. This suggests that either the crashes in Belagavi are more fatal, resulting from higher speeds in highways, or that fewer minor accidents are reported to the police. It is likely to be a combination of the two, but it still requires urgent attention from the authorities.

Tamil Nadu

The distribution of road crashes and deaths is more widespread in Tamil Nadu. There are two epicentres – Chennai and the districts surrounding it, and Coimbatore and the districts around it.

In terms of road crash fatalities also, Coimbatore and the areas around Chennai dominate.
Similar to North Karnataka, the poorer districts in South and South-East Tamil Nadu have much fewer road crashes, as well as deaths.

Top 10 districts

Not too surprisingly, the top 10 districts in terms of road crashes as well as road crash deaths are dominated by those in Tamil Nadu. Bengaluru Urban is the only district to have more than 4000 road crashes, falling just shy of 5000. Also concerning is that six districts in Tamil Nadu registered more than 3000 road crashes.

However, the road crash deaths show a very different set of districts. Tumkur, Dindigul and Thiruvallur show up in this ranking at the bottom despite not being in the top 10 in crashes. Interestingly, Chennai, despite being second in the number of crashes, does not show up in the top 10 when it comes to deaths.

For the top four districts in terms of deaths, the trend has been getting worse over the last three years suggesting that urgent measures are needed to improve road safety. In the case of Chengalpattu the rise has been dramatic from 2021 to 2022 which suggests the need for further investigation.

In fact, the three trends observed above, of Chennai registering much fewer deaths in comparison to the number of road crashes, Chengalpattu’s numbers shooting up since 2022, and Thiruvallur showing up in the top for road crash deaths, but not road crashes suggests a broader trend.

Chennai’s “success” story

In 2021, Chennai reported 5034 road crashes, which resulted in 998 deaths. In 2022, that number had reduced drastically to 3452 road crashes resulting in 507 fatalities. While many hailed the measures taken to improve safety, the numbers seem to show a slightly altered reality.

In the same period that Chennai showed its highs and dipped to its lows, its surrounding districts, Thiruvallur and Chengalpattu showed drastic increases. Given that a large part of the population lives in the surrounding districts unlike in Bengaluru Urban, it is possible that the numbers have been normalised by districts, but it needs more research on the ground to understand more.

In terms of road safety, however, considering the four districts as one Chennai Metropolitan Region, the numbers are showing rapid growth and need urgent intervention.

Whether at district, state or national levels the number of road crashes and deaths has only been growing over the years. While announcements are made about improving road safety the reality doesn’t seem to be affected. Effective measures to improve basic road safety as well as reduce the number of vehicles on the streets need to be undertaken at every level.