The Minister of Roads and Urban Development, Abbas Akhoundi, said on Wednesday that Iran’s road system requires a complete overhaul in order to keep up with population growth and increasing the number of vehicles, MNA reported. “The total value of the country’s roads stands at about 20 trillion rials,” the roads minister said, noting that 8 trillion rials is annually needed for maintenance. More than 17 million vehicles are currently are on the roads, which is believed to be a lot higher than Iran’s roads can handle due to the doubling of the population over the last 30 years. Akhoundi noted that the country’s roads don’t have the capacity to handle the growing number of privately owned vehicles. In 2012, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated in a report that Iran had the highest number of deaths caused by road accidents in the world. “Around 55 people die in Iran daily due to road accidents,” the deputy head of Iran’s Traffic Police, Mohammad Karim Khosravi recently said citing Iranian Legal Medicine Organization statistics.
