NEW DELHI: Deaths due to accidents on national highways have marginally reduced. The road transport ministry on Wednesday informed Rajya Sabha that 53,372 lives were lost in road crashes on the NH network in 2023 and this reduced to 52,609 during last year. Govt data showed that in 2022, fatalities on NH were 61,038.In a written reply, the ministry said the govt has published the road accidents report annually up to 2022. “Further, electronic detailed accident report (eDAR) portal has been developed, a central repository for reporting, management and analysis of road accidents across the country,” said the ministry. Quoting eDAR data, it said that till June this year, 26,770 lives were lost in crashes on NHs.The ministry said that the NHAI has installed the advanced traffic management system (ATMS) on high-traffic density NHs and national expressways such as Delhi-Meerut Expressway, Trans-Haryana, Eastern Peripheral Expressway and Delhi Mumbai Expressway.“ATMS has provisions for various electronic enforcement devices which help in speedy identification of incidents on highway stretches and effectively monitor highways, thereby improving the response time of the on-site assistance,” it said.Responding to a separate question, the ministry said road safety audits have been conducted for 1.1 lakh km NHs during the last three years.