Official: Traffic accidents kill over 3,600 Moroccans per year

Motorists wait to board ferries bound for Tangier at the Algeciras port on July 31, 2018. – Thousands of Moroccan nationals working and living in Europe pass through the Strait of Gibraltar as they return to spend summer holidays in Morocco (JORGE GUERRERO/AFP/Getty Images)

A Moroccan official said Monday that road traffic accidents kill more than 3,600 people and injure some 12,000 others each year.

Prosecutor general Hisham al-Balawi said during an event organized on the National Day of Traffic Safety in Rabat that “this problem costs the country 2.5 per cent of GDP, or 15 billion dirhams a year (about $1.5 billion)”, explaining that traffic accidents kill ten people and injure more than 52 others per day.

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“It is estimated that if the current pace of road traffic accidents at the international level continues as it is, it will lead to the death of 2.4 million people by 2030 while the economic cost will reach 5 per cent of global GDP, as well as social and other effects”.

According to the official, the Moroccan authorities registered more than 1.4 million speed limit violations in 2018.

Meanwhile, Noureddine El Deeb, director of road transport and traffic safety at the Ministry of Transportation said as many as 550 new radars would be installed in 2019, adding that “the ministry expects to record six million traffic violations in 2019”.

He pointed out that the new measures will reduce the risk of traffic accidents.

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