In January 2018, a video went viral which showed a man trying to click a selfie get hit by a train. This incident which occurred in the Telangana state of India is not really rare. In fact, India is the leading country when it comes to selfie deaths. Various studies have shown that Indians are reckless in their usage of smartphones.

The stats suggest that India is not just the leader, but it's also where more than 60 percent of the world's selfie deaths have occurred. Assistant professor Ponnurangam Kumaraguru who has conducted many studies on the topic has built several tools to record the incidents. His studies suggest that a staggering 135 selfie deaths have occurred in India out of 221 in the world.

"I have been working on the topic of selfie deaths aka Killfiles for a while. The stats in India are really worrisome. India is the only country where multiple deaths have occurred in the same incident. Additionally, it is the only country where more than one selfie death incidents have occurred in the same place," Kumaraguru told Killer Features on a call.

He had produced a larger study with Carnegie Melon University in 2016 which had more details on the topic. They had recorded the data from March 2014. At that time death count in India was 76 and world death count was 127. In two years, there have been certain changes in the numbers. But the number of deaths in 2017 is lower than the previous year.

The study suggests that height is the primary reason for selfie deaths, "We looked at all the articles in our database to figure out what are the most common factors/reasons behind selfie deaths. Overall, we were able to find 8 unique reasons behind the deaths. We found that most common reason of selfie death was height-related. These involve people falling off buildings or mountains while trying to take dangerous selfies," it says. The study cites drowning in the water while taking a selfie as the second most fatal cause.

A study by Samsung suggests one in three pedestrians have taken a selfie while walking on the road. “Irresponsible usage of mobile phones, including the new trend of taking selfies on the road, is becoming one of the major causes of road accidents today," Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister of Road Transport & Highways and Shipping, said. Samsung has created a campaign to raise awareness among users.

Steps taken for prevention

Mumbai police was one of the first authorities to take action to prevent selfie-related demises. It identified 16 dangerous places and declared them as no-selfie zones in 2016. In the same year, Indian Railways had declared that taking a selfie near the tracks can be counted as causing nuisance and the person can land in jail or face a fine.

Even the centre has asked state governments to identify no-selfie zones. It aims to prevent any casualties through Public Address system and volunteers.

“The state government of Maharashtra has informed that they have taken measures to create awareness through signages indicating danger zones including selfie danger zones in the past,” Minister of state for home Hansraj Ahir told the MPs.

“We have started putting sign boards at hill stations and waterfalls but we can’t have it everywhere, though every place is a potential risk,” Karnataka's IT minister Priyank Kharge said last year

Kumaraguru is banking on technology though. He has made two apps under the brand Saftie. One of them is a crowdsourcing tool to report about locations which might be dangerous to take selfies. Users can pin the location on the map and state the reason of the spot being threatening to life. The other app, on the other hand, uses the combination of the camera and machine learning to determine if the spot is dangerous to take a selfie or not.

"Sure, the number of selfie deaths have reduced year over year. But we have had 8 casualties this year already. Many of the incidents might not be reported as well. Involvement of the big companies is necessary now," he says, "Imagine if we had markers in Google maps to suggest a potentially hazardous point."