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A World Health Organization (WHO) report highlighted that Thailand has the highest road accident death rate among Asian countries.
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However, India saw the most killed in road accidents.
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Road accidents is now the Number 1 cause of death for children and adults up to 29 years old.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has published their annual Global Status Report on Road Safety 2018. In the report, Thailand still has the deadliest roads in Asia while India saw the greatest number of lives lost in traffic accidents.
Although published in 2018, the report provides data collected from 175 countries in 2016.
Thailand’s status as the second deadliest roads in the world has improved to eighth with 32.7 deaths per 100,000 citizens. A whopping 74.4% (16,178) of the 21,745 killed were drivers/passengers of 2-wheeled vehicles. Traffic accidents kill an average of 21,491 persons in the country each year.
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Eight African countries and one South American nation join Thailand in the Top 10.
In terms of pure numbers, however, the Indian subcontinent saw an almost unbelievable 150,785 reported deaths. Conversely, the WHO believes many more fatalities were probably unreported and as many as 299,091 were killed on India’s roads. The country’s population of over 1.3 billion people had the effect of lowering the rate to 22.6 per 100,000.
By comparison, China has the second highest total number of reported deaths from traffic accidents at 58,022 among her 1.4 billion citizens. Again, the WHO believes that an estimated total of 256,180 were killed in 2016. China’s road death rate was 18.2/100,000.
Malaysia’s road death rate is still high but has seen much improvements at 23.6/100,000 with a total of 7,152 reported cases. There was no official number in the report, but it is widely believed that some 60% of all traffic-related deaths involve motorcycles.
Our neighbor Indonesia reported 31,282 traffic deaths in that year. Fatalities on two-wheel vehicles contributed 73.6% to the total figure. However, they have a low rate at 12.2/100,000 due to their large 261 million population.
The WHO added that traffic accidents are now the leading cause of death among children and adults up to 29 years old, and 8thhighest among people of all ages. At 1.35 million deaths each year, more die in road accidents than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and diarrheal diseases. The situation is worsening and a person is killed every 24 seconds somewhere in the world.
Sobering thoughts for 2019.
Source: World Health Organization
