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India is a signatory to the second global high level Conference on Road Safety held in Brazil in 2015, referred to popularly as the Brasilia declaration, which, inter-alia, resolved to halve the deaths and injuries from accidents by 2020 and to include this target in the 2030 agenda for sustainable development by the participating countries. Road accidents continue to be a leading cause of death, disabilities and hospitalization in the country despite our commitment and efforts. India ranks first in the number of road accident deaths across the 199 countries and accounts for almost 11% of the accident related deaths in the World. A total number of 449,002 accidents took place in the country during the calendar year 2019leading to 151,113 deaths and 451,361 injuries. In percentage terms, the number of accidents decreased by 3.86 % in 2019over that of the previous year, while the accident related deaths decreased by 0.20 % and the persons injured decreased by 3.86. Road accidents have been profiled by road category, type of impacting vehicle, type of collision, age of victim, gender and road user category which inter-alia bring out the following: National Highways which comprise of 2.03 percent of total road network, continued to account for a disproportionate share of 35.7 per cent of deaths in 2019 pointing to need for improved enforcement and correctives to be put on National Highways. State Highways which account for 3.01% of the road length accounted for 24.8 percent of deaths. Other Roads which constitute about 95 % of the total roads were responsible for the balance 39% deaths respectively, and electronic monitoring of the same. Further, National Highways falling under the administrative control of NHAI account for 66 percent of road accident related deaths followed by National Highways falling under State PWD which account for 25 percent of Road Accident deaths. The remaining 9 percent Road Accident deaths are accounted for by National Highways under other Departments. Two wheelers account for 35% of total road accident deaths on National Highways falling under NHAI, followed by cars, taxis, Vans & LMVs (18.6%) and pedestrians(14%) followed by share of Trucks of (10.7%) and share of buses of (4.9%) and share of bicycles at (2.9%) . These are not very different from the percentage share for these road user categories for National Highways as a whole and accordingly requisite change in the design of the road/speed etc that may be warranted needs to be initiated by all the controlling agencies for NH The working age group of 18 – 60 accounted for a share of 84 percent in the total road accident deaths. The share of males in number of total accident deaths was 86% while the share of females hovered around 14% in 2019. In 2019, the Ministry focused on the identification and rectification of Black spots and identified 5583 black spots in the country in 2018. Road accidents are multi-causal and are often the result of an interplay of various factors. like (i) human error (ii) road environment and (iii) vehicular condition. The information received from the States/UTs on the causes of road accidents brings out inter-alia the following: Under the category of Traffic Rule Violations, over speeding is a major killer, accounting for 67.3% of the persons killed followed by driving on the wrong side of the road which accounted for 6.1% of the accident related deaths. Use of mobile phones accounted for 3.3% of the deaths with drunken driving accounting for 3.5% of the persons killed. Further the numbers of persons killed for these reasons in 2019 were much higher than in 2018 suggesting need for improved enforcement of MVA 2019. Driving without valid license/learners license accounts for 15% of accidents. About 30% of deaths can be attributed to non use of helmets and 14% of deaths can be attributed to non use of seat belts. Vehicles more than 10 years accounted for 41% of accident related deaths. Overloaded vehicles accounted for about 10% deaths. Both road accidents and accident related killings are more a rural phenomenon than an urban phenomenon. Thus in 2019, the share of number of person killed in urban and rural area was 32.9 per cent and 67.1 per cent. In terms of those killed in 2019, Delhi retains its first rank followed by Jaipur, Chennai, Bengaluru and Kanpur among the million plus cities. The State of Tamil Nadu recorded the highest number of road accidents in 2019. The number of persons killed in road accident was the highest in Uttar Pradesh in 2019.

When Vladimir Putin shattered the peace in Europe by unleashing war on a democracy of 44 million people, his justification was that modern, Western-leaning Ukraine was a constant threat and Russia could not feel "safe, develop and exist". But after weeks of bombardment, thousands of deaths and an exodus of millions of refugees, the question remains: what is his war aim and is there a way out? What does Putin want? The goals he set at the start of Russia's invasion appear to have been watered down during the course of a war that he assumed would be swiftly won. He could not even admit it was an invasion or a war, preferring the fiction of a "special military operation". But what is clear is that he sees this as a pivotal moment in Russian history. "Russia's future and its future place in the world are at stake," says foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin. The Russian leader's initial aim was to overrun Ukraine and depose its government, ending for good its desire to join the Western defensive alliance Nato. He told the Russian people his goal was to "demilitarise and de-Nazify Ukraine", to protect people subjected to what he called eight years of bullying and genocide by Ukraine's government. "It is not our plan to occupy the Ukrainian territory. We do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force," he insisted. But there were no Nazis and no genocide, and Russia has imposed brutal force on dozens of towns and cities and united Ukrainians in opposition to its occupation. The bombardment continues - but latest reports from peace talks suggest Russia is no longer seeking to overthrow the government and is instead aiming for a neutral Ukraine. Since Ukraine achieved independence in 1991, as the Soviet Union collapsed, it has gradually veered to the West - both the EU and Nato. Russia's leader aims to reverse that, seeing the fall of the Soviet Union as the "disintegration of historical Russia". He has claimed Russians and Ukrainians are one people. "Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood," he asserted, denying Ukraine its history. In 2013 he pressed Ukraine's pro-Russian leader, Viktor Yanukovych, not to sign a deal with the European Union, prompting protests that ultimately ousted the Ukrainian in February 2014. Russia retaliated in 2014 by seizing Ukraine's southern region of Crimea and triggering a rebellion in the east, backing separatists who have fought Ukrainian forces in an eight-year war that has claimed 14,000 lives. There was a ceasefire, and a 2015 Minsk peace deal that was never implemented. Just before his invasion, President Putin tore up the peace agreement and recognised two Russian-backed statelets as independent from Ukraine. As he sent in the troops, he accused Nato of threatening "our historic future as a nation", claiming without foundation that Nato countries wanted to bring war to Crimea. Is there a way out of this war? Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak believes a ceasefire could start in the coming days because Russian forces are stuck in their current positions. Both sides have spoken positively of progress in negotiations, and Mr Podolyak says Russia's president has softened his demands. At the start of the war, the Russian leader wanted Ukraine to recognise Crimea as part of Russia and to recognise the independence of the separatist-run east. Ukraine would have to change its constitution to guarantee it would not join Nato and the EU. The future status of Crimea and the Russian-backed statelets in Luhansk and Donetsk is still far from being resolved, but they may not be a deal-breaker if the two sides agree to address that issue at a later date.

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