The toll of road accidents in Maharashtra has reached alarming levels and must be recognised as a public health crisis. In 2024 the state recorded 36,084 road crashes and 15,335 fatalities – that means on average 99 accidents and 43 deaths each day. (The Week) Over the six years from 2019 to September 2025, Maharashtra witnessed some 2.19 lakh accidents leading to 95,722 deaths. (Mid-day)
The causes are many: over speeding contributes to more than 65% of fatal crashes. (ETAuto.com) The highways are particularly deadly they account for 37% of the fatalities in the state. (ETAuto.com) Children and adolescents make up 11% of all fatal victims, and their injury patterns differ significantly from adults they are more likely to sustain severe head trauma because of body-proportional differences. (ETAuto.com)
Declaring this a public health crisis would bring multiple benefits. It would mobilise health systems, emergency response, trauma care, and behavioural-change communication. It would allow cross-sector coordination transport, police, education, health, infrastructure to work together. The precedent of recognising issues such as non-communicable diseases or epidemics underscores that a crisis label changes urgency, focus and resource allocation.
Given the sheer scale, frequency and preventability of these crashes, treating road accidents merely as traffic incidents is no longer tenable. Maharashtra must elevate its response in awareness, infrastructure design, emergency care and enforcement and treat each death not just as an isolated tragedy but as evidence of a public health emergency.
