India: A truck veers off course and kills 15 people who were sleeping on the roadside.

Sylvie Claire / January 20, 2021

At least 15 people died crushed by a truck in western India while sleeping by the roadside on Monday night, authorities said. Among the dead were a little girl, eight women and six men, said police officer Usha Rada in the Suraj district of Gujarat state. Six others were injured. The truck collided with a tractor carrying sugar cane just after midnight at a crossroads.

The driver of the truck , lost control of the vehicle, which as it went off the road ran over workers who were sleeping on the edge, said police officer C M Jadeja. According to the police, both the truck and tractor drivers were arrested. In 2019, more than 150,000 people died in some 500,000 accidents on India's roads, or 410 deaths per day or 17 deaths per hour, according to government data. Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said Monday in launching a month-long national road safety campaign that the government hopes to halve the number of deaths and road accidents by 2025.