Road accidents in Maharashtra have tripled in 4 years

Maharashtra's 108 ambulance service responded to 75,559 road accidents in 2017, a marginal decrease from the 75,769 cases in 2016, according to the latest data from Maharashtra Emergency Medical Services (MEMS).

The numbers also showed that a majority of casualties in road accidents were on National Highways and higher in cities other than Mumbai.

The number of road accidents, however, has increased significantly since 2014. Traumatic emergency services provided in 2014 was at 28,758, which almost doubled to 56,290 in 2015.

Speaking about the road accident emergency cases handled by 108 ambulance service, Dr Dnyaneshwar Shelke, the chief operating officer of 'MEMS- Dial 108' stated that most of road accidents have been on the national highways due to vehicle collision.

"Most of the road accident calls which we get are due to vehicle collision on national highways mainly four-wheelers. In those major accidents, there are multi-casualty cases. Besides these, there are bike accidents on highways.

Since these accident cases are on national highways, the number of cases are more in rural districts of Maharashtra and less in cities. In a city like Mumbai even though there are a lot of vehicles, the speed is low due to which there are fewer road accidents," he said.

"Since the road accidents mainly happen in the rural part of highways, we have been creating first responders by training rural citizens. We will soon be training more than 58,000 ASHA workers in groups for first responders," added Dr Shelke.

108 responses

• Traumatic emergency services provided in 2014 was at 28,758, which almost doubled to 56,290 in 2015. 
• In 2017, ambulance service responded to 75,559 accidents, a marginal decrease from 75,769 cases in 2016