The number of road deaths this year has risen 10 percent to more than 7,000, according to Khaled al-Eisa, supervisor general of King Abdul Aziz Hospital in Jeddah.
There were 284,000 road accidents in 2008 that resulted in 6,400 deaths and 1,481 people were left disabled, Arab News reported.
Saudi Arabia has a population of about 27 million, making the rate of accidents among the worst globally, coupled with a heavy toll on the local economy.
Saudi Arabia already had one of the highest traffic fatality rates in the world. In 2008, the figure for road deaths was 6,400. In 2005, the number of people killed in road accidents was 4,000.
The latest figure represents 25.9 road deaths per 100,000 population. This figure is not as bad as Iran’s 44 per 100,000, but is way ahead of countries like the US (19 per 100,000, the world average) or Canada (nine per 100,000). In 2008, there were 23.7 deaths per 100,000. In the UK, with more than twice the population, there were 2,538 road deaths in 2008, less than half the number in Saudi Arabia. In Spain there were 2,182.
In just five years, the official death toll from road accidents has risen 75 percent.
“The financial cost of accidents is three times as much of the combined expenditure of education and health sectors in the kingdom. The financial loss caused by traffic accidents exceeds 20 billion riyals ($5.3 billion) annually,” Eisa said.