NEW DELHI — On the day Japneet Singh died, his father dressed him neatly in his crisp school uniform for picture day at his nursery school. At school, Japneet, 4, smiled shyly for the camera. But he never made it home.

That afternoon, when Japneet’s grandfather arrived to pick him up at the bus stop, he found him lying on the roadside in a pool of blood. Japneet’s schoolbooks were scattered on the ground, and his brother, Parmeet, was kneeling beside Japneet’s crumpled body, shaking him.

“Get up, Cherry!” Parmeet implored, calling his brother by his nickname. “Get up!”

Such scenes have become all too familiar in India, which leads the world in total traffic fatalities. A startling number of the victims are schoolchildren.

Horrific school bus accidents occur with alarming regularity. At least 14 students died and 21 were injured in March when a school bus plunged into a canal in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. In July, one student died and dozens were injured when their bus fell into a gorge in Kashmir. And often the accidents are like the one that killed Japneet — he exited the bus and was crushed beneath its wheels.