Pune has recorded its lowest number of road accident fatalities in three years during 2025, marking a significant achievement for the city's traffic police. Data released on Monday shows a consistent decline in deadly crashes despite the city grappling with rising traffic density and congestion.
Steady Decline in Fatalities Amid Growing Traffic
The statistics reveal a promising trend. The number of fatal accidents in Pune reduced to 287 in 2025 (till December 22), down from 334 in both 2023 and 2024, and 315 in 2022. Correspondingly, deaths caused by these accidents fell to 302 this year. This compares to 351 deaths in 2023, 345 in 2024, and 325 in 2022, making 2025 the safest year on this metric in the recent past.
Police officials attribute this positive shift to a series of deliberate and targeted interventions. The focus has been on high-risk corridors known as black spots, where engineering solutions, better signage, and strict enforcement have been implemented.
Targeted Action at Black Spots Yields Results
The data underscores the success of this focused strategy. Accidents at identified black spots plummeted to just 33 in 2025. This is a major improvement from 46 such incidents in 2024 and a significant drop from 75 in 2023.
Beyond black spots, city-wide traffic management measures have played a crucial role. Authorities point to synchronized traffic signals, sustained drives against drunk driving and wrong-side driving, and restrictions on heavy vehicle entry during peak hours as key factors. These steps, police say, have helped reduce the severity of collisions even as the total volume of vehicles on Pune's roads continues to grow.
The Persistent Challenge of Non-Fatal Accidents
While the reduction in deaths is commendable, the overall accident burden on the city remains alarmingly high. The data reveals a concerning rise in accidents causing serious injury. Grievous injury accidents increased steadily from 607 in 2023 to 659 in 2024, and further to 674 in 2025.
Minor injury accidents also stayed elevated, with 744 cases reported this year, nearly matching the 745 cases from 2024. Non-injury accidents stood at 168 in 2025, slightly lower than the 182 in 2024 but higher than the 137 in 2023. In total, the period from January to December 22, 2025, saw 1,326 accidents, a slight decrease from the 1,403 accidents reported in the full year of 2024.
This mixed picture highlights that while enforcement and engineering have successfully prevented many deaths, the fundamental frequency of crashes remains a stubborn challenge. It indicates a need for continued and possibly expanded efforts in driver education, road discipline, and infrastructure improvement to bring down the overall number of collisions in Pune.
