Majority of Indians Worried About Road Safety Survey Finds

Road safety in India is no longer a matter of government statistics and policy papers alone — it has entered the daily consciousness of millions of ordinary citizens. A major new international survey has found that nearly two-thirds of Indians are actively concerned about road safety in their immediate surroundings, and that this concern is matched by broad, consistent support for a wide range of measures to address it. The findings — drawn from the Ipsos Global Mobility Survey 2026, one of the most comprehensive cross-national road safety studies ever conducted — present a compelling picture of a nation that is not only aware of its road safety crisis but is ready and willing to back the solutions needed to resolve it.

Overview of the Ipsos Global Mobility Survey 2026

A 31-Country Study That Captures India's Road Safety Mood

The Ipsos Global Mobility Survey 2026 spans 31 countries across Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Africa — making it one of the most geographically comprehensive assessments of public attitudes toward road safety conducted in recent years. In India, the survey reached approximately 2,200 respondents, with around 1,800 interviewed face-to-face and 400 online, providing a robust sample that reflects the views of the country's adult road-using population across urban and semi-urban contexts.

The survey was designed to capture three interconnected dimensions of public road safety sentiment: the level of personal concern that citizens feel about road safety in their own areas, the degree of support they express for specific policy interventions, and their views on the effectiveness of road safety communication in changing driving behaviour. Together, these three dimensions provide a rare and actionable picture of where India's public opinion stands on road safety — and what kind of policy momentum that opinion can support.

The survey's publication coincides with one of the most active periods in India's road safety governance history — with the Supreme Court issuing landmark highway safety directives, the Sadak Suraksha Abhiyan 2026 mobilising millions of citizens around a national safety movement, and state governments across the country deploying AI-based traffic management systems and large-scale enforcement drives. The survey's findings land in a policy environment that is ready to act — and that needs the evidence of public support that the Ipsos data provides.

Six in Ten Indians Concerned About Road Safety

63 Percent — A Majority That Cannot Be Ignored

The headline finding of the Ipsos survey is as clear as it is significant: 63 percent of Indians surveyed express concern about road safety in their area. That figure — representing nearly two-thirds of the adult population — is not a fringe sentiment or a minority preoccupation. It is a majority position, held consistently across the demographic groups that participated in the survey, and one that reflects the lived experience of citizens who encounter dangerous road conditions, near-misses, and the consequences of road accidents in their daily lives.

The personal nature of this concern is important. Road safety worry in India is not an abstract, policy-level anxiety — it is grounded in the immediate, tangible reality of roads that millions of people navigate every day on two-wheelers, in cars, on foot, and in public transport. When 63 percent of a surveyed population says it is concerned about road safety in its area, it is describing conditions it encounters directly, repeatedly, and with consequences that it has witnessed at close range.

Balaji Pandiaraj, Group Service Line Leader, Automotive and Mobility Development and Customer Experience at Ipsos India, placed the finding in the context of India's road safety statistics — noting that over 1.68 lakh lives are lost each year to road accidents, underscoring the scale of the challenge that public concern and policy action are seeking to address together.

Strong Public Support for Stricter Traffic Laws

63 Percent Back Tougher Enforcement — In Line With Global Average

The survey's findings on policy support are equally striking in their breadth and consistency. Around 63 percent of Indian respondents support stricter traffic laws — a figure that places India precisely in line with the global average of 66 percent and signals that the Indian public's appetite for tougher enforcement is not a fringe position but a mainstream expectation.

This level of support for stricter laws is particularly significant in the Indian context because it challenges a commonly held assumption among policymakers: that enforcement drives and penalty increases will face public resistance. The Ipsos data suggests the opposite — that a substantial majority of Indian citizens believe the current legal framework needs to be strengthened, and that they would support rather than resist a more rigorous enforcement environment.

The implication for road safety governance is direct and actionable. When policymakers invest in AI-based traffic management systems, automated e-challan generation, and higher penalties for violations — as multiple state governments across India are doing in 2026 — they are not acting against public sentiment. They are acting in accordance with a clear majority position that the Ipsos survey has now documented with statistical rigour.

Driver Education, Speed Limits and Infrastructure Measures

Broad Support Across the Full Range of Road Safety Interventions

What distinguishes India's road safety public opinion profile in the Ipsos survey is not the intensity of support for any single measure but the remarkable breadth of support across the full spectrum of interventions that road safety experts recommend. This breadth is one of the survey's most policy-relevant findings — and one that deserves careful attention from those responsible for designing India's road safety strategy.

Around 62 percent of Indian respondents support enhanced driver education programmes — a figure that reflects public recognition that enforcement alone cannot change road behaviour and that investment in skills, knowledge, and awareness is an essential component of any effective road safety strategy. Close to two-thirds support reduced speed limits across residential streets, main roads, and highways — across all three road types simultaneously, not just in the most obviously dangerous environments.

A similar proportion supports dedicated cycling lanes, pedestrianisation and prioritisation of vulnerable road users in school zones, and the use of road safety advertising campaigns to influence behaviour. This consistent pattern of support — hovering around the 60 to 65 percent mark across multiple different interventions — indicates that Indian citizens are not looking for a single silver bullet solution to the road safety crisis. They understand, intuitively or through experience, that safer roads require action on multiple fronts simultaneously: better laws, better enforcement, better infrastructure, better education, and better communication.

India's Position Among 31 Countries in the Survey

Above European Averages, Below the Most Concerned Markets

The Ipsos survey's global comparative data provides an important frame of reference for understanding India's road safety concern levels in an international context. At 63 percent concern, India sits significantly above mature road safety markets such as South Korea at 36 percent and Germany at 36 percent — a gap that reflects the reality that citizens in safer road environments feel less personally at risk and therefore express lower levels of concern.

At the other end of the spectrum, countries such as South Africa and Indonesia show support for road safety measures frequently exceeding 80 percent across multiple intervention categories — reflecting environments where road safety outcomes remain severe and the perceived urgency of intervention is correspondingly high. Peru leads the concern rankings at 76 percent, suggesting that the Latin American experience of rapid urbanisation combined with insufficient safety infrastructure creates a degree of public urgency that even India's serious road safety situation has not fully matched in the survey data.

India's positioning between these extremes is revealing. It is a country with a genuinely severe road safety crisis — more severe, by fatality numbers, than any other in the world. Yet its public concern levels, while high by developed-world standards, have not reached the near-universal urgency seen in some of the survey's most concerned markets. This gap between the objective severity of the road safety situation and the public's subjective concern level suggests that there is both room and need for continued awareness building — and that as India's national road safety conversation deepens, the already-high 63 percent concern figure is likely to grow further.

Public Sentiment Meets National Road Safety Policy

The Foundation for Progress Is Clearly in Place

The Ipsos survey's most important contribution to India's road safety ecosystem is the evidence it provides that public sentiment and national policy direction are genuinely aligned. The four pillars of the Sadak Suraksha Abhiyan 2026 — Discipline, Duty, Shield, and Change — map directly onto the interventions that the Ipsos survey finds Indian citizens supporting: stricter enforcement, personal responsibility, protective technology, and behavioural transformation.

The survey also found that 63 percent of Indian respondents agree that road safety advertising and communication is effective in reducing unsafe driving behaviour — a finding that directly validates the investment that initiatives like the Sadak Suraksha Abhiyan are making in public communication as a behaviour change tool. When nearly two-thirds of the public believes that communication works, the strategic case for sustained, high-quality, multi-channel road safety messaging is not merely justified — it is compelled by the data.

As Pandiaraj observed, what stands out in India is the breadth of support. People are backing not just one solution but a full range of measures — from stricter laws to safer road design and better education. The convergence of high public concern, broad policy support, and receptivity to communication that the Ipsos survey documents represents a genuine and time-sensitive opportunity. The foundation for progress is clearly in place. The task now is to build on it — with the urgency, the coordination, and the sustained commitment that India's road safety crisis demands and that the Indian public is ready to support.