New drivers wreak havoc on roads… and cause 100 billion Dinar loss to Treasury

The head of the National Center for Prevention and Security on Roads Ahmed Nait Al Hussein said on Sunday that the economic losses of road traffic accidents are estimated at 100 billion Dinars or (10000 billion centimes) annually due to the cost of medical treatment, transporting of the injured and the recruiting of medical staff, adding that the capital Algiers ranks first in terms of number of road accidents.

 Mr. Nait al-Hussein said that 337 people were killed in road accidents in the first nine months of 2017. However, this toll remains heavy, according to him, by registering 3,900 fatalities a year.

“We recorded 19,559 corporal accidents during the first 9 months of 2017 and compared to the same period of 2016, we recorded a decrease of 3,391 accidents, which represents 15 percent and a significant slump in the number of injured that is 6, 945, equivalent to 20 percent,”.

The head of the National Center for Prevention and Security on Roads underscored that 30 percent of drivers involved in these incidents are young people under the age of 29, and 50 percent of new drivers, who were licensed for driving five years ago, have also been involved in numerous road traffic accidents.

He pointed out that the rise in the number of vehicles on the roads estimated at 8 million will lead to disasters at the road level and therefore we are currently working on controlling this adverse phenomenon.

He added that the proportion of motorcycle involvement in road traffic accidents was  estimated at 12.29 percent during the first nine months of 2017, while buses are the least involved in road traffic accidents by a rate of 2.73 percent in the same period, but the “damaging repercussions are heavy and dangerous”, as he put it.