Doha: The number of road accident deaths in 2020 has come down compared to 2019. According to the General Directorate of Traffic statistics for 2020, the number of road accidents deaths were 138 cases (in 2020) compared to 154 the year earlier.
The General Directorate of Traffic at a press conference held yesterday at its headquarters clarified that out of the total 138 deaths, 69 were motorists, 26 passengers and 43 pedestrians.
Brigadier Muhammad Abdullah Al Shahwani, Director General of the General Directorate of Traffic; Brigadier Engineer Muhammad Abdullah Al Maliki, Secretary and Member of the National Traffic Safety Committee, and several traffic officers attended the press conference.
Colonel Muhammad Radi Al Hajri, Director of the Traffic Awareness Department at the General Directorate of Traffic, presented the traffic accident figures of 2020 that witnessed a significant decline in deaths and in the number of traffic violations compared to 2019.
Colonel Al Hajri said: “The department registered 1.5 million (1,574,812) traffic violations in 2020, which is 20.1 percent less than 2019 when they registered 1.9 million violations (1,969,896). The majority of them were over speeding, with 69.1 percent of total violations thanks to the strategies implemented by the Ministry of Interior (MoI) represented by the National Traffic Safety Committee in cooperation with the concerned authorities in the State.”
“The most of the road accidents in 2020 were minor accidents without injuries at a rate of 96.3 percent, while fatal accidents amounted to 0.1 percent of the total road accidents last year,” he noted.
Regarding main reasons for road accidents in 2020, Al Hajri said that the main reason for road accidents was negligence and reckless driving, which were behind 42.4 percent of the total cases. The second reason, 21.9 percent, was not keeping a safe space between vehicles.
According to the statistics, most of the road accidents that resulted in injuries in 2020 were collisions between two or more vehicles, at a rate of 59.3 percent, followed by collisions with a fixed object (15 percent) while pedestrian accidents accounted for 10 percent.
The injuries resulting from road accidents dropped in 2020 by 14.8 percent compared to 2019, and most of them were minor injuries with a rate of 90.1 percent of total cases.
Commenting on decline in road accidents deaths in 2020, Brigadier Al Shahwani confirmed that despite an increase in the number of people and vehicles in the State of Qatar, road accidents decreased.
“What has been achieved is not attributed only to the General Directorate of Traffic, but also the result of concerted efforts made by other State entities such as MoPH, Ashghal, and MoTC,” Al Shahwani added, appreciating their efforts and the great roles that contributed to this achievement.
