Road safety management needs to move beyond counting crashes and challans towards identifying dangerous traffic behaviour and preventing fatalities, experts said on Wednesday at a national road safety symposium organised by the Institute of Road Traffic Education (IRTE) and union ministry of road transport and highways.
“A near miss is a warning signal. “There are more than 250 types of traffic violations under the various Acts, Rules and Regulations taken together. However, as per the Police Report, the Delhi Traffic Police in 2023 focused on not more than about 30 categories of violations,” he said. Delhi recorded 1,457 road crash deaths in 2023, 1,551 in 2024 and 1,463 in 2025, according to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways’ Road Accidents in India reports.
Because they were harder to detect and prosecute, baluja said enforcement remained concentrated on a relatively limited set of offences, while more dangerous moving violations were often overlooked.
He said traffic authorities should analyse near-miss incidents, conflict points and violations at the micro level to identify risks before they result in crashes. If we can identify these risks scientifically and intervene early, we can prevent them from becoming fatal crashes,” he said.
