As many as 26,770 individuals lost their lives in road accidents on National Highways during the first half of the 2025 calendar year, as reported to Parliament on Wednesday (July 23, 2025). In a written response to the Rajya Sabha, Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari stated that there were 52,609 fatal accidents recorded in 2024 on National Highways (NH).
Mr. Gadkari informed the House that the National Highways Authority of India has implemented the Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS) on National Highways and National Expressways with high traffic density, including the Delhi-Meerut Expressway, Trans-Haryana, Eastern Peripheral Expressway, and Delhi-Mumbai Expressway.
The ATMS includes various electronic enforcement devices that facilitate the rapid identification of incidents on highway segments and effectively monitor the highways, thus enhancing the response time for on-site assistance, he explained.
The Union Minister noted that for new projects on high-density and high-speed corridors of NHAI, the installation of ATMS is typically included as part of the project. Additionally, ATMS is also deployed as a standalone project in significant corridors that have already been constructed, he added. In response to a different inquiry, Mr. Gadkari mentioned that a road safety audit has been carried out for 1,12,561 km of National Highways over the past three years.
