Deaths due to traffic accidents in Qatar declined by 21.6% last year, compared to the previous year, mainly due to faster emergency response, a senior official of the General Directorate of Traffic at the Ministry of Interior said yesterday.
Road fatalities dropped to 178 in 2016 from 227 in 2015, according to data released by the General Directorate of Traffic yesterday. Of the total fatalities last year, 66 were drivers and 55 were passengers. 57 pedestrians also lost their lives.
“The number of road fatalities decreased due to improvement in the ambulance services, in addition to many other factors like increasing the number of radars and police patrols” Brig Mohamed Saad Al Kharji, Director General of the Traffic Department said in a press conference held to announce the road traffic statistics of 2016.
The traffic offenses also showed a decline of 4.5% in 2016 compared to 2015.
The number of recorded offenses dropped from 1,720,735 in 2015 to 1,643,209 in 2016, which means that the average daily traffic violations were approximately 4,564, with 190 violations every hour.
The analysis showed that the highest proportion of deaths due to traffic accidents during 2016 involved those drivers (66) with a rate of 37.1% of total traffic deaths
Pedestrian fatalities accounted for 32% (57) of the total traffic deaths in 2016, which marked a decline of 13.6% in comparison to 2015 and passengers 30.9 percent (55).
Meanwhile, 94.9% of the people dying due to road accidents in 2016 were men while 5.1 % were women.
The highest death rate was among those aged between 21-30 that represent 36.5% of total deaths, while those aged between 31-40 stood at 27%, those aged above 40 represented 22.5%, and
those between 11-20 were 11.2% and the remaining 2.8 were those aged below 11.
Of the total road fatalities, Asians represented 53.9%, Arab expatriates 21.9%, and the citizens from other GCC states were 1.7%.
The seriousness of road accidents in 2016 dropped with an average of 31.2% compared to 2015, and the average number of road accident deaths per 100,000 persons in Qatar is 5.5 against the global average of 17.4 which is 68.4% higher.
Most of the traffic accidents recorded in 2016 were minor accidents without injuries which accounted for 97.5 of total accidents.
About half of major traffic accidents last year (44.6 %) resulted from negligence, recklessness and lack of caution. The data showed reckless driving and negligence caused 108 fatal accidents and the same factors led to 388 major injuries and 2,228 minor ones. Failure to maintain enough space between vehicles caused six deaths, 68 serious injuries and 1,323 minor injuries.
Pedestrians crossing road were victims in 7 deaths, 51 major injuries and 725 minor ones, while lack of lane discipline led to 14 deaths, 53 serious and 466 minor injuries. Jumping red signal led to one death, 23 serious and 186 minor injuries, while wrong overtaking caused three deaths, 16 major and 97 minor injuries. Speeding caused 12 deaths, 15 major injuries and 48 minor ones.
Two-thirds of major accidents were caused by collisions, which accounted for 66.7 percent. Overturning of vehicles accounted for 12.1% and run over incidents involving pedestrians formed 11.5% of the accidents.
