Road Accidents Impose Hefty Economic Burden

Accidents on Iran’s roads cause thousands of deaths and injuries every year, and cost the country’s economy billions of dollars.

As Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture reports on its website, road accidents inflict a heavy toll on Iran’s economic development.

Below are the findings of the report provided by world bodies:

Iran has one of the deadliest road records in the world. Road accidents are the second leading cause of death in Iran after cardiovascular diseases.

According to UNICEF, the rate of road accidents in the Middle Eastern country is twentyfold higher than the world average.

Road accidents annually claim the lives of 28,000 people and injure or disable 300,000 more in the country. Road accidents took the lives of 964 people during the 10-day period ending April 4 this year, coinciding with the Iranian New Year holidays.

Road accidents impose direct or indirect burdens on families as well as the overall economy. Road fatalities impose a loss of 320 billion rials ($8.5 million) on Iran’s economy daily, which is 8% of the country’s gross domestic product.

According to the World Health Organization’s 2014 report on road safety, Iran has the highest number of deaths caused by road accidents in the world. The report suggested that 43.5 people out of 100,000 are killed in road accidents in Iran.

Every 19 minutes one person dies on Iran’s roads and every two minutes people will hear that one of their family members has survived a crash but with serious injury and perhaps lifelong disability.

“Road accidents brought about 18 trillion rials ($478.850 million) in direct or indirect expenses in the Iranian year 1386 (March 2007-8),” Minister of Roads and Urban Development Abbas Akhoundi said while referring to a study conducted in that year.

With regard to road safety, Iran is ranked 189th among 190 countries globally, according to the Research Center of Central Insurance of Iran. The only country below Iran in this ranking is Sierra Leone in West Africa.

Nine people per 10,000 vehicles are killed every year in the world while the figure in Iran is 37 people. Although the number of cars in England is three times higher than that in Iran, road accidents happen 32 times less in England compared to Iran.

Last year in Germany, 3,670 people died in road crashes; however, the figure stood at 19,000 people in 1970.

Some 25% of all road fatalities in Iran are those involving motorcycles; over 60% occur because the drivers did not wear a helmet and suffered head trauma.

Each year, nearly 1.2 million people are killed and 20-50 million are injured or disabled in road crashes worldwide. UNICEF says 90% of road fatalities in the world occur in low- and middle-income countries.