Fatalities resulting from road accidents continue to be a daily occurrence in Myanmar. Last year alone, there were more than 16,000 accidents. Over 4,600 people died and left behind their loved ones - tragedies that could have been avoided. If this doesn’t strike as a wake-up call for more sustainable measures to address the situation, concrete facts and figures should.
According to the Ministry of Transportation, there were more than 6 million vehicles in Myanmar in 2016, and close to 84 percent of these new vehicle registered were motorcycles. While the prevalence of more vehicles on the road reflects the economic progress of Myanmar, this has also unfortunately led to an increase of statistics for road accidents.
In Southeast Asia, there are approximately 63,000 reported road traffic deaths each year. However, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), the reported numbers do not represent the real magnitude of the road safety problem in the region. It is estimated that the actual number of road traffic fatalities lies at around 117,000 per year, due to either inaccurate data or undocumented accidents. While Singapore has one of the fewest traffic-related deathsworldwide, Thailand has one of the most, second only to Libya.
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