77 People Killed in Iranian Road Accidents in Three Days
According to the head of Iran’s Traffic Police, 77 people have died in traffic accidents across Iran over a 72-hour period. Brigadier General Hadianfar states that forty percent of road accidents in the final days of the year were vehicle rollovers.
Brigadier General Kamal Hadianfar on Thursday afternoon, the first day of Farvardin (March 21), during a visit to the Police Highway Command’s Nowruz headquarters in Alborz Province on the Tehran-Karaj-Qazvin Highway, outlined statistics on road accidents across Iranian roads over the past three days.
According to Iran’s state news agency IRNA, the head of the Traffic Police states that in the 72-hour traffic accidents, 77 people were killed and approximately 1,700 people were injured.
It is predicted that the number of intercity trips during this year’s Nowruz holiday will increase by more than 10 percent compared to the same period last year. On this basis, the possibility of an increase in road accidents during the New Year holidays in 1398 cannot be ruled out.
Hadianfar said about these accidents: “Based on statistics, 40 percent of accidents that occurred on the country’s roads over the past 72 hours were vehicle rollovers, and over 20 percent were due to drivers’ loss of control of vehicles, with the remainder being other causes.”
Thousands of Accident-Prone Points on Iranian Roads
In road accidents, three factors—human, road, and vehicle—play the primary role. The lack of standards in most domestically produced vehicles is an issue that officials also criticize. Brigadier General Taghi Mehri, head of the Traffic Police of the Law Enforcement Force (NAJA), had also stated last month that there are still approximately 5,400 accident-prone points on Iranian roads, with 3,400 of them located on intercity highways.
Nevertheless, according to official statistics from responsible organizations in Iran, nearly 70 percent of accidents occur due to human error, inattention to the road ahead, illegal lane changes, and excessive speed.
Although the statistics on road accident victims in Iran are still very high compared to many countries in the world, this situation has significantly “improved” over the past decade.
The head of NAJA’s Traffic Police states that in the year 1384, more than 28,000 people were victims of road accidents in Iran, and this figure decreased to 16,200 people in 1396, despite an increase in the number of vehicles.
Fluctuations in the Declining Trend of Victim Numbers
Road accident casualty statistics for last year have not yet been officially released, and the trend in fatal accidents has experienced fluctuations. The Young Journalists Club news agency reported in Ordibehesht of last year, citing forensic medicine statistics, that the number of road accident victims in 1396 increased by 1.7 percent compared to the previous year.
The number of road accident victims in Iran varies in different seasons of the year and days of the week. An examination of available statistics shows that 77 deaths in three days leading up to the start of the new year was less than the average number of victims in the past two years. On this basis, the number of deaths in road accidents during this period was less than 26 people per day.
In 1396, an average of 44 people died daily in road accidents. Statistics from the Forensic Medicine Organization regarding casualties from such accidents in the first eight months of last year indicate a slight increase in the average number of daily deaths during this period. During this time frame, 12,261 victims of road accidents were recorded.
Source: DW
