Beginners Involved in 4% of Road Accidents

Nearly 4% of motorists involved in traffic accidents in the previous calendar year (ended in March) were new drivers, according to the head of legal department at the Traffic Police.

“Last year, 1,432 (over 3.75%) of all road accidents involved drivers who had got their licenses for less than a year,” said Colonel Mohammad Tarahomi, as reported by ISNA.

Over 40,000 road accidents were registered in the previous year across the country.

The Traffic Police department of the Law Enforcement Forces (LEF) rewrote the rules for issuing new driving licenses for light motor vehicles (LMV) to curb road accidents and prevent untimely deaths.

The new bylaw will come into effect from June 22. It imposes tough restrictions on beginners of light motor vehicles (LMV), who henceforth will not be able to drive alone for at least three months after the license is issued.

License holders must also be accompanied at all times for the 90 days while driving by a holder of a valid license. And, the latter should have a license for at least 12 months.

During the three-month probation, new drivers are also banned from driving between 10 pm and 5 am either alone or accompanied. Additionally, novices can drive only within city limits. They cannot drive beyond 25 km in suburban areas.

In case of an accident in which the newcomer is at fault, the license will be confiscated by Traffic Police, but will be returned provided they attend 24 and 16 hours of theoretical and practical classes, respectively.

Human error such as speeding, road rage and talking on the cell phone plays the biggest role in road crashes in Iran, and its prevention could make a big difference in the number of road mishaps that has cut short innocent lives for decades.

Nonstandard vehicles and unsafe roads are also responsible to a large extent for traffic mishaps.

  Driver Brake Reaction Time

Colonel Tarahomi believes that despite the training and evaluation processes, the nature of a driver also impacts the likelihood of involvement in a road accident.

“Drivers are different in disposition. Some have risky-behavior in general but some have quick brake reaction time,” he noted.

Brake reaction time is the amount of time that elapses between the recognition of an object or hazard in the roadway and the application of brakes. The time varies widely between individual drivers. An alert driver may react in less than 1 second, while other drivers may require up to 3.5 seconds.

Also, to make highways reasonably safe, road engineers must provide ‘a continuous sight distance’ in road design. A vehicle driver needs to be able to see in order have room to stop before colliding with something in the roadway, such as a pedestrian in a crosswalk, a stopped vehicle, or road debris. Insufficient sight distance can adversely affect the safety or operations of a roadway or intersection.

“Reaction time varies greatly with situations and from person to person, between about 0.7 to 3 seconds or more,” Tarahomi said. But the normal range is between 0.6 to 1 second, although the road environment, traffic situation, and other relevant conditions also are important to reaction time.

Texting while driving slows reaction time more than drinking or drugs. Sending a text message delays reaction times by 37%. By comparison, using drugs slows it by 21%, and drinking by 13%.

Speaking on a hand-held telephone remains the most dangerous, delaying reaction by 46%, global research has found.

Iran has one of the highest rates of road deaths in the world. Although traffic accidents account for the third leading cause of death in the country, they are responsible for the highest years of potential life lost (YPLL) which is an estimate of the average years a person would have lived if he/she had not died prematurely.

Annually, over 16,000 people are killed in road accidents, with men comprising 75% of the figure, and mostly in the age group 25-40. Also, more than 800,000 people are injured in road crashes. Road accidents are also the leading cause of preventable deaths among children.