The state-run ISNA news agency on Thursday quoted Masoud Habibi as saying: “50 people are killed on the roads daily and 16 times that number are injured in road accidents. As a result of road accidents, 100 people are added daily to the number of disabled people of the country. These statistics are shocking.”
The state-run Mehr News Agency had reported on July 5, 2015 that the World Bank had declared the situation of road accidents in Iran as critical. According to the same news agency, Iran ranked 189 out of 190 in terms of unsafe driving accidents. According to international statistics, Iran is one of the countries that has the most deaths in road accidents.
Mehr added that in comparison to some other Asian countries, one can say that the death toll in road accidents in Iran is 25 times of Japan and two times of Turkey. Vehicles in Iran hit each other 100 times more than some countries in the world.
For example, although the UK has 3 times more vehicles than Iran, but the rate of accidents is more than 30 times less than Iran.
The report adds that the roads in many parts of the country especially in deserts, forests and mountain areas have serious structural problems some of which are not repairable and their infrastructure must be changed.
According to research conducted by experts of the traffic police, in 2014 more than 150,000 road accidents were recorded, one third of which (54,000 accidents) were due to problems related to the roads.
Mohammad Shariatmadari, President Hassan Rouhani’s executive deputy, acknowledged the increase of deaths due to road accidents. Referring to the death toll of the Iranian regime in the 1980-88 war with Iraq, he said: It is very sad to hear that the road death toll is more than the number of our dead in the war.
