This study examines the road accident rates from 29 Indian states and 6 Union Territories during 2006–2015. In this paper, we have employed several empirical techniques such as regression, generalized method of moments (GMM), and threshold regression models to examine how education and attitude of the drivers impact the road accident rates. In our empirical analysis, we demonstrate that lawless driving is found to be positive and statistically significant while incorporating both state and year effects. We also find some interesting result in the context of education and road accidents. We notice positive relationship between higher education and road accident rates across Indian states, which tells us highly educated people are more prone to road accidents as compared with less educated people. In the threshold analysis, the study discovers the positive relationship between road injury and accidents caused by people with higher education, in cases of considering road injury rate from drunken driving as the threshold variable. There appears to be a large number of behavioral issues emanating from higher education, which contributes significantly to the road accident rates in the Indian states. Hence, there is a need for policy intervention. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd