Iranian Road Accidents’ Losses Estimated at 8 Percent of GDP

One person dies in a road accident every half hour in Iran, taking the annual death toll to 17,000, the Iranian Legal Medicine Organization announced.
The organization also said close to 30,000 people are annually embroiled in accidents that lead to paralysis.
The pain of losing a loved one is bigger than the terrible numbers, but the media are usually inclined to highlight the economic losses of these accidents.
According to Majlis Research Center, the research arm of the Iranian Parliament, the costs of road crashes amount to 8% of Iran’s gross domestic product. In the years ending March 2012 and March 2017, car collisions cost the economy 519 trillion rials ($2.1 billion) and 535 trillion rials ($2.17 billion) respectively, a report by the Persian-language daily Shargh reads.