This page[1] has more detail and context, but in short, I don’t buy the “lower speeds cause less accidents” — the human cost of road traffic incidents in India is immense. Especially when you count injuries and maimings, which isn’t reported here.
Road traffic related injuries and fatalities are also massively under-reported in India’s press because of various cultural reasons, notably that the problem is so deep-rooted that reporting on it has the same newsworthiness that water is wet. The only time it does get reported widely is if the victim is famous.
Anyhow, India has 16.6 traffic deaths per 100,000 population, which is pretty high. For 1.1 billion people, that’s what — 180k deaths? And more injuries. On a human scale, this is to the point that most families know people who’ve died or been badly injured in road traffic accidents.
It also has 130.1 deaths per 100,000 motor vehicles per year, which is higher than neighbouring SE Asia, and higher than all but two regions (Eastern Med & Africa).
tl;dr — please don’t use minimise the scale of the problem road traffic accidents cause in India. Indians deserve safer roads just like everyone else.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...