157 Deaths in Four Days; Cost of Traffic Accidents is ‘8 Percent of National GDP’
Iran’s Traffic Police have warned of the irreversible nature of “accidents” and the extensive direct and indirect damage inflicted on the country due to the high frequency of traffic accidents in Iran.
Kamal Hadianfar, head of Iran’s Traffic Police, in an interview with “Hamshahri Online,” stated that the direct and indirect damage to the country resulting from each traffic fatality is 5.4 billion tomans, and the damage caused by traffic accidents is “equivalent to 8 percent of Iran’s gross domestic product.”
The head of Iran’s traffic police, an institution that is itself one of the main bodies responsible for overseeing vehicle transportation and road travels in the country, nonetheless raises a question while expressing concern about compensating for the moral damage of these accidents, saying: “What organization do we have to restore a family that has been destroyed and lost due to an accident?”
According to Iranian police statistics, in the first four days of this year’s Nowruz travels, 157 people lost their lives in road accidents.
Based on the latest comprehensive statistics announced by Iran’s Legal Medicine Organization on the 20th of Ordibehesht 1399, at least 17,000 people die annually on Iranian roads due to accidents, a shocking and extremely high figure.
Seyyed Hadi Hashemi, former head of Iran’s Road Police, told news website “Jameh24” on the 7th of Dey that despite officials tampering with reported figures, casualties remain high, adding: “In traffic statistics, by categorizing road fatalities into type one and two traffic incidents and new categories, they attempted to exclude many deaths from road fatality statistics in order to lower the figures, but even that didn’t happen.”
On the 23rd of Dey, the “Young Journalists Club” wrote following several chain-reaction accidents with high casualties in a short period: “The story of horrifying accidents that even lead to declarations of public mourning seems to have no end, and from time to time we witness bloody accidents on the country’s roads that cause many families to grieve.”
Hadianfar also stated on the 23rd of Dey that “nearly two people are killed every hour in Iran due to road accidents” and “32 percent of traffic fatalities are vehicle passengers who did not wear seatbelts, 25 percent are drivers who cause death to themselves and others, motorcyclists account for 24 percent, and pedestrians account for 19 percent of other traffic fatalities.”
