The Times of India:Saturday, December 24, 2011.
MUMBAI: Mumbai has lost more lives to rail and road accidents in the past 10 years than the city's cumulative death toll in terror attacks since 2002. The city's lifeline has ended up claiming more than 36,688 lives, besides injuring 36,152 people in the past 10 years since 2002. Of these, nearly 20% deaths were due to trespassing alone, on stretches under Kurla and Borivli police stations.
Comparatively, only 444 people died in terror strikes since 2002. In fact, since the 1993 blast, in which 257 people died, the total toll in bomb blasts including the 26/11 terror strike is a mere 710.
Road accidents also major contributors to the fatalities as 3,315 people have died in the past one decade. This does not include the figure for the year 2011, but it has always been in the range of 600-650 every year since 2001. But in 2010 an alarming 782 deaths were recorded.
A query filed under the Right to Information (RTI) act by activist Chetan Kothari has revealed that the death toll on rail tracks hovers around 3,700 since 2006. But the worst years for railway commuters were 2006 and 2007, during which the number of deaths registered under various circumstances touched 4,029 and 3997 respectively.
Since 2002, stretches falling under Kurla Government Railway Police recorded 3,360 deaths due to trespassing. Likewise, on Western Railway, stretches under Borivli GRP topped the chart with 3,334 deaths.
Trespassing-related deaths were highest in 2004 in which 2,734 people died, including 1,495 on CR alone. Kothari said, "Apart from trespassing, the second most common cause of death on tracks was falling from a running train. In all, 6,050 people died under similar circumstances, of which nearly 4,000 were on Central Railway."
Despite the increase in suburban services, as many as 734 and 675 people died after falling from the train on the Mumbai suburban network in 2010 and 2011, respectively. Kothari said, "In 2010, 519 people died after falling from trains on CR. The figure was only marginally low in 2011, when 468 deaths recorded on CR."
On WR, these types of deaths are registered primarily in crowded stretches of Borivli GRP, which includes stations from Dahisar and Goregaon and Vasai GRP that has its jurisdiction between Mira Road and Virar.
An analysis of figures highlighting the death to the falling down reveals that most of these incident have occurred at Borivli and Vasai GRP jurisdiction, where on average 50-60 people died per year. On CR, deaths due to this reason occurred primarily on stretches of Kurla, Kalyan, Dadar and to some extent at Thane. Kothari said, "From 2010 to November 2011, a total of 223 people died due to falling from trains in stretches under Kurla GRP."
Deaths after being hit by a pole have come down drastically in the past 10 years. Kothari said, "In 2002, 96 people died after dashing against a pole from a moving train. This figure has gradually decreased to 19 in 2011." Likewise, deaths due to falling into the gap between the platform and train reduced drastically. "In 2003, 46 people died under this circumstance, this has become single-digit since 2006," he said.
Injuries have also witnessed an alarming increase. Kothari said, "In 2002, 2,614 people had got injured under various circumstances. It crossed the 3,500 mark in 2005 and has remained above the 4,000 mark range since 2006."
Road accidents too are a cause for concern, experts said. "Mumbai should follow the road discipline of London, New York and Singapore. But here, motorcycle-borne youngsters and those in SUVs break signals with impunity and cause accidents. Also, in foreign cities, there is invisible patrolling through CCTV cameras, which is yet to take off in a big way in Mumbai," said traffic expert and activist A V Shenoy.
An RTO official said, "We are conducting a refresher course for driving instructors in Mumbai in the first week of January so that they, in turn, create better and safe drivers. This will reduce number of road accidents. Also, we have made driving tests at Andheri RTO stricter."
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