Odishatv Bureau
New Delhi: Nearly four lakh people have lost their lives in different accidents, caused by road and rail mishaps, fire, lightning and other factors, across the country in 2010, say official statistics. A majority of road mishaps took place between 6 pm and 9pm.

According to the statistics released today, a total of 3,84,649 accidental deaths have been reported last year with Maharashtra accounting for 9.3 per cent of country`s population has reported almost one sixth (16.7 per cent) of accidental deaths due to unnatural causes.

Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, accounting for 6.1 per cent and 5.7 per cent respectively of the country`s population, have reported 9.3 per cent and 8.4 per cent respectively of such deaths, the report of the National Crime Control Bureau for 2010, released by Home Minister P Chidambaram said.

Maximum number of road accidental deaths occurred in May (42,546), an increase of 5.5 per cent over 2009. Maximum road accidents (69,282) were reported during 6 p.m. to 9 p.m and maximum number of these accidental deaths (42,546) occured between 6 PM and 9 PM (73,312).

A total of 6,78,326 cases of `Un-Natural Accidents` caused 3,59,583 deaths and injured 5,03,932 people during 2010, the report said.Male:female victim ratio is 78:22. There was an increase of 7.7 per cent in accidental deaths last year in comparison to the previous year. 14.0 per cent of the increase in deaths is due to causes attributable to nature and 7.4 per cent increase in deaths by un-natural causes.

Males outnumbered females in all kinds of accidental casualties due to unnatural causes at the national level except fire accidents (where 66.6 per cent of those killed were females as compared to 33.4 per cent males).

The major un-natural causes of accidental deaths were (i) road accidents (37.9 per cent), (ii) railway accidents and rail-road accidents (7.8 per cent), (iii) poisoning (7.8 per cent), (iv) drowning (7.7 per cent), (v) sudden deaths (7.6 per cent) and (vi) fire accidents (6.8 per cent). A total of 4,61,757 traffic accidents were reported during 2010 comprising 4,30,654 road  accidents, 2,843 rail-road accidents and 28,260 other railway accidents. "It is observed that the rate of deaths per thousand vehicles has decreased from 1.5 in 2006 to 1.3 in 2010," the report said.

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