Road Accident Blackspots & Highway Safety Statistics of Nepal

Nepal's official road accident statistics are compiled by the Nepal Police, whose Traffic Directorate aggregates crash reports from district traffic offices across the country each fiscal year (mid-July to mid-July). In fiscal year 2080/81 BS (2023/24 AD), police recorded 22,927 traffic accidents nationwide in which 2,369 people were killed. Reporting on police data from the first half of FY 2081/82 (2024/25), the Kathmandu Post noted that Nepal now averages at least 75 recorded accidents and about seven deaths every day, with roughly 83 people injured daily.

The cumulative toll is heavy: police figures cited in early 2025 show more than 24,000 people killed and over 50,000 seriously injured in the decade to 2024, with around 260,000 accidents recorded since 2014. Motorcycles dominate the casualty count — in Poush 2081 (mid-December 2024 to mid-January 2025) alone, 2,076 of the 3,374 vehicles involved in accidents, about 70 percent, were motorcycles.

Annual deaths and serious injuries reported by Nepal Police show a persistently high toll, with a COVID-19 lockdown dip in 2077/78 (2020/21) and a peak in 2079/80 (2022/23).

By the police count, road deaths in Nepal per year have ranged between roughly 2,250 and 2,900 over the past several fiscal years. International estimates, however, suggest the real figure is far higher. The World Health Organization's Global Status Report on Road Safety 2023 estimated about 8,000 road traffic deaths in Nepal in 2021 — an estimated fatality rate of 28.2 per 100,000 population, well above the Asia-Pacific average of about 15 per 100,000. The gap between the WHO estimate and official statistics reflects under-reporting, deaths that occur after victims leave the crash scene or hospital records that are never linked back to police files.

The direction of travel is also worrying. WHO data show Nepal's road fatality rate rose by about 13 percent between 2010 and 2021, a period in which most of the region managed reductions. Vulnerable road users bear a disproportionate share of the burden: pedestrians and bicyclists accounted for roughly 27 percent of fatalities in the 2021 estimates, and Nepali traffic police repeatedly identify motorcyclists as the single largest group of victims.

Rapid, poorly regulated motorisation explains much of the trend: the road network and vehicle fleet have expanded far faster than traffic engineering, driver licensing and enforcement capacity, and many rural roads are opened by bulldozer without any safety design.

Province-level data compiled by Nepal Police and reported in 2024 show that the plains provinces — where the East-West (Mahendra) Highway carries dense mixed traffic of trucks, buses, motorcycles, tractors and pedestrians — record the most road deaths. Over the five fiscal years covered by that tally, 12,371 people died nationwide and 171,098 vehicles were involved in crashes.

Madhes Province topped the list with 2,604 deaths in five years, followed by Lumbini (2,218) and Koshi (2,210). The Kathmandu Valley, counted separately by the valley traffic police office, recorded 864 deaths in the same period; the valley registers by far the most accidents (26 to 30 per day on average) but proportionally fewer fatalities, because congested urban speeds are lower than on highways.

Ask a Nepali driver to name the most dangerous road in Nepal and the answer is usually the 36-kilometre Narayangadh (Narayanghat)–Mugling section, part of the Madan Ashrit Highway that links the East-West Highway at Narayangadh in Chitwan with the Prithvi Highway at Mugling. Carrying roughly 20,000 vehicles a day — including the bulk of freight moving between Kathmandu and the Indian border, and most Kathmandu–Pokhara traffic — the road squeezes along steep, landslide-prone slopes above the Trishuli River. A 2023 engineering study of police crash records found the segment averages about 76 recorded crashes a year, among the worst crash densities on any Nepali highway, with overspeeding the leading cause of its frequent head-on and rear-end collisions.

The corridor's dangers were formally mapped as early as 2016, when the Central Regional Police identified 32 accident-prone spots concentrated in the 25 kilometres between Jugedi and Mugling, naming locations such as Gaighat, Ghumaune, Kalikhola, Charkilo Height, Panch Kilo, Bhalupahad Ghumti, Bhorlepul and Jalbire. Monsoon landslides compound the crash risk: after heavy rain in 2024, government inspections flagged more than 40 landslide-prone points on the section, several of them high-risk.

The deadliest single event came on 12 July 2024 (28 Ashar 2081), when a pre-dawn landslide at Simaltal in Chitwan swept two night buses carrying about 65 passengers into the swollen Trishuli River; only three people aboard survived. The road had earlier been widened to a 9–11 metre carriageway with more than 100 slopes stabilised under the World Bank-supported Nepal-India Regional Trade and Transport Project (completed in 2021), which improved driving conditions but also raised speeds, and the slope hazard persists. A parallel route on the opposite bank of the Trishuli is now being opened to provide redundancy.

The Prithvi Highway (Prithvi Rajmarg), built with Chinese assistance between 1967 and 1974, runs 174 kilometres from Naubise on the Tribhuvan Highway to Pokhara and remains the main road link between Kathmandu and Pokhara. Much of it follows the gorges of the Trishuli, Marsyangdi and Madi rivers through Dhading, Chitwan, Tanahun and Kaski districts, producing an almost continuous sequence of sharp curves, narrow carriageway and restricted sight distance — the classic ingredients of highway blackspots.

A blackspot identification study of the Mugling–Kotre section published in the Journal of Engineering Technology and Planning, using three years of district traffic police records and the weighted severity index (WSI) method, ranked the Ghasikuwa–Byas Chowk stretch in Tanahun as the most hazardous, followed by Byas Chowk–Chapaghat, Belchautara–Dulegaunda, Gunadi–Jamune, Benitar–Aanbu Khaireni and Dumre–Bandipur Gate. The study linked the crash clusters to narrow lanes, sharp horizontal curves, inadequate super-elevation and poor sight lines, worsened by monsoon landslides, surface runoff and winter fog along the river valleys.

Sections of the highway are gradually being widened — contracts to four-lane parts of the Mugling–Pokhara stretch were awarded in 2021 — but construction zones create their own hazards, and buses plunging off Prithvi Highway curves into the Trishuli or Marsyangdi rivers account for some of Nepal's worst mass-casualty accidents.

The roughly 1,028-kilometre East-West (Mahendra) Highway, Nepal's longest road corridor, produces the largest absolute numbers of deaths because it crosses the densely settled Tarai, where highway traffic mixes with pedestrians, bicycles, tractors and stray cattle. Blackspot studies drawing on Department of Roads (DoR) inventories and district traffic police crash data have been carried out on several segments, including in Kanchanpur, Kailali, Bardiya and eastern Tarai districts.

A 2025 study of the 41-kilometre Bangaun–Gulariya segment in Kanchanpur district, using four fiscal years of crash data (2076/77–2079/80 BS), ranked Gulariya as the most dangerous location — 29 deaths and a weighted severity index of 1,333 at a single spot — followed by Kaluwapur (19 deaths) and Daiji. Field surveys found the same deficiencies at almost every blackspot: no median barriers, shoulders below the Nepal Road Standard, missing road markings and kerbs, potholed pavement, visibility as short as 100 metres on forest curves, and electric poles, billboards and stray animals at the road edge.

In Nepali practice, blackspots are typically identified with the weighted severity index, which weights fatalities (41 points) far above grievous (4) and minor (1) injuries over a multi-year window, sometimes cross-checked against road geometry. The method is simple enough for district traffic offices to apply, but follow-through is the weak link: identified blackspots often wait years for barriers, signage, lighting or realignment.

Police attribute the overwhelming majority of Nepal's road accidents to driver behaviour. Officials cited in state media say about 76 percent of accidents involve speeding or other traffic-rule violations; in Poush 2081 (Dec 2024–Jan 2025), over-speeding was blamed for 1,160 of 2,276 recorded accidents, with drink-driving (247 cases), unsafe pedestrian crossing and illegal overtaking following. Other recurring factors include unlicensed and fatigued drivers, overloaded night buses, ageing vehicles with poor maintenance, and mobile phone use at the wheel.

Timing and terrain shape the risk. Traffic police data show about 39 percent of accidents occur between 6 pm and midnight, when visibility drops and long-distance night buses are on the move, with another 37 percent between noon and 6 pm. The monsoon (roughly June to September) multiplies hazards on hill highways through landslides, rockfall and slippery pavement — the 2024 Simaltal disaster being the starkest example — while winter fog blinds drivers on the Tarai and in river valleys.

Infrastructure quality lags behind traffic growth: assessments summarised in Nepal's 2025 road safety profile found only about 17 percent of assessed roads rate three stars or better for pedestrian safety, and most highways lack medians, footpaths, crash barriers and consistent signage. Emergency response is thin outside cities, so victims on remote highway sections often reach trauma care long after the golden hour has passed.

Nepal has committed on paper to the UN Decade of Action goal of halving road deaths, adopting successive national road safety action plans and drafting a federal Road Safety Act to create a dedicated, funded road safety council; ministries have also periodically banned night buses on specific hill highways after major disasters. Engineering work continues — the Narayangadh–Mugling upgrade, slope stabilisation, Prithvi Highway four-laning and blackspot treatment programmes by the Department of Roads — but implementation and enforcement remain the weak points, and annual deaths have not fallen decisively.

For travellers, the data suggest practical precautions, listed below. A final caveat on the numbers: police statistics capture only reported crashes, definitions of 'serious injury' vary, and provincial tallies are periodically revised. Figures on this page are attributed to their fiscal year and source, and the WHO estimate is the best available indicator of the true scale of Nepal's road-safety crisis.