THE recent horrible train accident in Odisha is a grim reminder of the urgency of improving the safety of our trains. While all European Union countries combined recorded 683 deaths from railway accidents in 2021, India recorded 24 times this number with a figure of 16,431 deaths in 2021.
The year 2021 witnessed lower than average accidents as traffic was just recovering from the shutdown due to the pandemic the previous year. In a more normal year, judging from average figures for the past decade, about 24,000 people die in railway accidents every year in India, according to. . .