The incident, captured by a police control room’s CCTV showed a speeding white car ploughing through the vehicles waiting under red light at the signal. The pedestrians and bike drivers were flung over several metres high in the air before they fell on the road.
Jaipur: Pink City has emerged as one of India’s deadliest cities for commuters in 2024, recording 1,001 traffic accident deaths, the second-highest among 53 major cities surveyed by the National Crime Records Bureau.According to the NCRB’s 2024 report, a total of 73,426 traffic accidents were reported across 53 cities during the year. The crashes left 63,519 people injured and claimed 17,797 lives. While Delhi topped the list with 2,181 fatalities, Jaipur overtook Bengaluru which recorded 894 deaths to become the city with the second-highest number of road accident fatalities in the country.The data showed that Jaipur logged 3,256 traffic accidents during 2024, in which 2,580 people were injured and 1,001 lost their lives, a fatality figure that translates into nearly three deaths every day on the city’s roads.The report also highlighted the growing contradiction at the heart of Jaipur’s rapid urban expansion: wider roads, rising vehicle ownership and expanding suburbs have come with a parallel surge in high-speed collisions and fatal crashes.Vehicle-wise data from Jaipur revealed that heavy vehicles continued to pose a major threat as trucks, lorries and mini-trucks were involved in accidents that caused 77 deaths during the year. SUVs, cars and jeeps together accounted for 135 fatalities, indicating that private vehicles remained among the biggest contributors to fatal crashes in the city.Meanwhile, three-wheelers and auto-rickshaws often associated with chaotic city traffic and overcrowding were linked to 14 deaths.For Jaipur, the numbers come amid recurring concerns over speeding on elevated roads, poorly regulated heavy vehicle movement, weak pedestrian infrastructure and inconsistent traffic enforcement. Traffic experts have repeatedly pointed to dangerous stretches, illegal median cuts, drunken driving and poor road engineering.The NCRB findings are also likely to intensify scrutiny of road engineering and emergency response systems in Rajasthan’s capital, where rising vehicle density has steadily outpaced infrastructure planning.“Jaipur continues to expand, but there is a lack of an integrated traffic management grid in the city. With only a limited traffic force, authorities have to rely heavily on technology, and Jaipur is also lagging behind cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad in that regard,” said an official.
