Despite the increase in traffic-calming measures on Iran's roads and highways, as of the start of the current Iranian year (started March 21), car collisions increased by 2.9%.
According to the latest report of Road Safety Commission, during the first quarter of this year, 13,308 mishaps occurred on the roads around Iran, ISNA reports.
The report notes that 17,798 people were injured, but the figure does not go into specifics of what kind of injuries those people incurred: mild, severe or fatal. The final figure for fatalities will be released later.
The first quarter figures for the current year show that the police's previous efforts to calm measures are no longer working. And with the increase in accidents, the average death toll will increase in tandem.
Previously, the deputy head of Iranian road police, Mohammad Karim Khosravi, said around 55 people die in Iran daily, due to car accidents, Shahre-Khabar newspaper reported. He was citing the Iranian Legal Medicine Organization statistics.
"Annually, about 40,000 people die in Iran from unnatural causes, and 50 percent of them are connected with car crashes," he said. "20,000 people per year makes approximately 55 people per day."
He went on to note that car accidents are the second biggest cause of death in the country, while the same reason holds ninth place in the world.
Regarding people injured in car accidents, Khosravi noted that this number is approximately 2,100 people per day.
He said Iran experiences car accidents 25 times more than Japan does, and twice that of Turkey, annually.
Refering to the reasons for such high rate of deaths in car accidents, Iranian experts say the country's roads are meant for low-speed driving, while drivers do not take that into consideration.
