ISLAMABAD: As Pakistan is facing increasing incidents of road accidents, it has recorded an 8% decrease in the total number of deaths from road accidents between a six-year period of 2015 and 2020, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
Interestingly, the available data tells that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab contributed to up to 80% of the total road accidents across Pakistan.
Areas where mountains are in excess like KP are more apt to get road accidents because of various reasons, Afzal Shigri, a retired senior police officer maintained. More accidents happen there because of dangerous weather and difficult road networks.
Crime-related stats are also always under-reported, said Dr Shoaib Suddle, another retired police officer. He was surprised to see enormous figures of road accidents in KP despite fewer number of cars and people in that area compared to other parts of the country.
According to the data available, over 40% of total accidents in Pakistan prove fatal. According to the data, a total of 68,322 road accidents took place in the last six years, out of which 27,629 proved fatal.
At 29,706 accidents, Punjab reported the highest number of accidents – both fatal and non-fatal. This made up 43% of the total accidents from 2015 to 2020.
KP, meanwhile, witnessed 25,040 road accidents, making up almost 37% of the total accidents. Sindh, Balochistan, Islamabad Capital Territory, Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir showed minimal road accidents as compared to those taking place in KP and Punjab.
The accumulative road accidents in these two provinces and three territories were not even half altogether of what took place in only Punjab and KP.
In Sindh, a total of 5,543 accidents took place in the last six years, whereas in GB, AJK, ICT and Balochistan, the number of total accidents from 2015 to 2020 were 1,007, 2,486, 1,373 and 2,536, respectively.
