India tops list of most dangerous places to travel by road

India, China and Brazil are the top three most dangerous places to travel by road, according to the data released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for the 5th UN Global Road Safety Week, taking place from May 6-12.
Last year, India registered 150,785 road fatalities while China and Brazil had 58,022 and 38,651 deaths on the roads respectively.
According to the WHO, road traffic injuries are the eighth leading cause of deaths worldwide and 54 per cent of the deaths are of pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. Road traffic injuries are also the first cause of death among children and young adults aged 5-29 years. Overall, 1.35 million lives are lost each year or around 3,700 people die on the road daily while over 50 million sustain injuries annually.
The WHO also noted that low-income countries, which own only one per cent of the world's vehicles, account for 13 per cent of road traffic fatalities.
The WHO called on government and non-government organisations to come up with concrete interventions to save lives. "(Our) vision is a world free from road traffic deaths and injuries," said WHO director-deneral, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
"Road traffic deaths and injuries are an unacceptable price to pay for mobility. There is no excuse for inaction. This is a problem with proven solutions. Governments and their partners must demonstrate leadership and accelerate action to save lives by implementing what works," added WHO Director, Dr Etienne Krug.
In the UAE, an average of two persons were killed daily in crashes on the UAE roads in the past five years, according to official statistics released by the Ministry of Interior in March this year. The figures from 2014 to 2018 revealed that 3,123 people were killed and 31,829 injured in the crashes.
But there was a marked decrease in the number of road casualties - 468 deaths were recorded in 2018 as compared to 543 in 2017 - a decline of 13.8 per cent. The mortality rate for every 100,000 people in the country fell from 4.52 in 2017 to 3.83 in 2018. The aim is to reduce this to three deaths per 100,000 people.
In Dubai, reducing speed limit on the Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Road and the Emirates Road to 110kmph helped bring down traffic accidents by 13 per cent last year, according to Major-General Mohammed Saif Al Zafin, chairman of the Federal Traffic Council and assistant commander-in-chief of the Dubai Police for operations.
"Failure of drivers to buckle up, wrong overtaking, ignoring safety distance between vehicles, and jaywalking are the main reasons behind road fatalities," underlined Al Zafin, adding: "The UAE is ahead of Finland, Spain, France and Australia in mortality rate but the police across the country aim to reduce it to 1 or 2 per cent by spreading traffic education among different road users.
"Ongoing indicators show that accidents are expected to go further down on these roads by the end of 2019," he noted.
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