Road accidents in Saudi Arabia are costing the economy 26 billion riyals ($6.93 billion) a year, a leading professor said in remarks published on Saturday, amid growing concern over the increasing number of fatalities on the roads.
Dr Ali al-Ghamdi, professor of traffic and transport engineering at King Saud University, estimated the cost of treating an accident victim averaged between 100,000 and 120,000 riyals, branding it a “huge waste of money”, Saudi daily Arab News reported.
Ghamdi, also a former chairman of the National Traffic Safety Committee, said around one-third of government hospital beds are occupied by accident victims at any one time.
The newspaper said there were as many as 485,931 accidents on Saudi’s roads in 2008, in which 6,458 people were killed and 36,486 injured.
Saudi’s roads rank among the most dangerous in the world. According the World Health Organization (WHO) figures, 29 road users died for every 100,000 of the kingdom’s population in 2007.
Only the UAE had a higher fatality rate among Gulf states, with 37.1 people killed on roads for every 100,000 of the population.