The recent spate of accidents leading to fatalities among the youth of India has one common strand: all were wearing headphones or earphones while walking on the roads or crossing railway tracks – thereby unable to hear the approaching vehicle or train. An assistant professor at New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences has been quoted in one of the news reports as saying that 30 percent of deaths in road accidents occur due to the use of hand-held devices while crossing the roads.

I am not sure if the professor based his observation on authentic data but his conclusion could not be very far from the truth even if the data is more dependent on hearsay and subjective assessment. A few days ago, the youngster who brings us our daily supply of packaged drinking water was hit from behind by a car while carting packed jars because the headphone was blaring in his ears. He was lucky to emerge unscathed.

A quick round of googling sparked by curiosity revealed that this tragedy was almost on the verge of becoming a global epidemic. A study at the University of Maryland found that fatal accidents involving pedestrians wearing headphones have tripled since 2004. The study further established that 68 percent of victims involved in these type of accidents were male – 67 percent were below the age of 30.  And, in an ominous similarity to the reports emanating from India, in 55 percent of accidents leading to fatalities, the vehicle involved was a train.

In the wake of the sinking of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, BBC put together an eminently readable – and informative – piece. It established that despite the headlines that aeroplane crashes or sinking ships grab, the number of people who die due to road accidents is startling. There were 373 fatalities on scheduled commercial passenger flights in 2011 worldwide. Before the Costa Concordia tragedy, 16 cruise ships related deaths were reported worldwide from 2005. In contrast, WHO estimates say that 1.2 million people die in road accidents every year.

India has an added problem – the sales of personal vehicles has jumped manifold in recent years. Urban DINKS (double income no kids) couples means two cars per family. The breakdown of nuclear families means large urban pockets having the same number of vehicles as the number of people.

This has necessarily resulted in roads being widened by municipal authorities leading to shrinking space for pedestrians and users of other slow moving vehicles like bicycles. More than 130,000 people die every year on Indian roads and the country has the dubious distinction of having overtaken China as the nation with the worst road traffic accident rate.

Drunken driving and over speeding continue to be a menace. Yet as the ‘headphone-deaths’ demonstrate, the high accident rate also has to with abysmally low levels of awareness on issues of personal safety while walking, driving or using public transport systems.

The odd traffic-parks maintained by civic authorities are insufficient. A massive awareness building exercise must be launched with family units as stakeholders. Roads can become more secure if pedestrians begin taking greater precautions – and this includes those either walking along on railway tracks or crossing them.