Quoting the National Crime Records Bureau’s 2007 statistics, the study says Delhi had the highest number of fatal road accidents in 2006: at 1794, it was “a whopping rate of 140 per million (10 lakh) population”.

The report — ‘Road Safety in India: Challenges and Opportunities’ — has veeb prepared by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, and was released by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) on Monday.

The report points out that though Delhi is said to have the highest ownership of motor vehicles per capita in the country in 2004, recent studies have estimated that the actual number of private vehicles on road is 60 to 70 per cent of the official statistic. “The official statistics overestimate the number of registered vehicles because owners do not have to register their vehicles every year,” it says. “Out-of-use vehicles (also) remain on the record.”

The study says Delhi has 6.5 cars and 13.3 two-wheelers per 100 persons: in comparison, Mumbai has 2 cars and 3.1 two-wheelers per 100 persons.

The report also says the number of hit-and-run cases is sharply high in Delhi, probably due to limited traffic police persons at night which lets offenders escape. Night-time crashes, it says, account for a large proportion of fatalities. Trucks have high involvement in both day and nighttime fatalities while buses feature prominently from about 7 am to 9 pm, the report says.