India, July 3 -- On Friday morning, CCTV footage from the Delhi-Dehradun Expressway near Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh were played in news screens across the country showing a car illegally reversing on the access-controlled highway when it was rammed from behind by an SUV. The impact was so severe that the car ricocheted off the median and was flung across multiple lanes. Four people died. The SUV too overturned after the collision.

Then on Tuesday morning, four more people were killed and 27 injured after a bus crashed into a container truck on the Yamuna Expressway near Mathura.

The incidents, though isolated, are united by circumstance. The crashes again underscored an uncomfortable truth about India's highways and expressways: when c...