With population growth, the demand for vehicles has increased tremendously, which has created an alarming situation in terms of traffic hazards and road accidents. The road accidents percentage is growing exponentially and so are the fatalities caused due to accidents. However, the primary cause of the increased rate of fatalities is due to the delay in emergency services. Many lives could be saved with efficient rescue services. The delay happens due to traffic congestion or unstable communication to the medical units. The implementation of automatic road accident detection systems to provide timely aid is crucial. Many solutions have been proposed in the literature for automatic accident detection .The techniques include crash prediction using smartphones, vehicular ad-hoc networks, GPS/GSM based systems, and various machine learning techniques. With such high rates of deaths associated with road accidents, road safety is the most critical sector that demands significant exploration. In this paper, we present a critical analysis of various existing methodologies used for predicting and preventing road accidents, highlighting their strengths, limitations, and challenges that need to be addressed to ensure road safety and save valuable lives.