SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region— Around 850 people are killed in traffic related accidents in Kurdistan Region every year, making road crashes the first major cause of deaths in the country, according to the Kurdish Ministry of Health.
The ministry’s data, which are based on police and hospital reports, shows that over 10,000 people are injured in traffic accidents every year in addition to the death tolls, a figure that is likely to increase given the growth of population and the poor state of Kurdish roads, the ministry warns.
“It’s an alarming trend. Generally speaking, nearly three people are killed and 28 others are injured every single day,” said Khalis Qadir, spokesperson for the ministry.
Despite heavy investments in rebuilding and expansion of the roads over the past decade, the ageing Kurdish roads are still in notoriously poor shape with insufficient safety conditions exacerbated by careless driving which appear to have led to an increase of accidents.
The average traffic-related death rate in the Iraq is 20 per 100,000 people, well above the world average, 17 deaths per 100,000.
“Unfortunately we have only three percent of the needed budget to maintain our roads. This is of great concern for us given the fact that the number of cars are increasing every year,” said Ibrahim Aziz, head of the office of road maintenance in Sulaimani where 206 people were killed over the past year on the roads.
Azid was referring to a decrease in their budget because of the financial crisis that began since early 2014 when Baghdad cut the Region's share of the budget over the export of oil by Erbil. However, his department used to have bulk budget for years before that, yet the roads remained unsafe.
The main causes of death and injury on Kurdistan’s roads are speeding, failure to wear seat belts, aggressive road behavior and driving aggressively and without heeding road signs, according to a police report published in 2013.
Night driving in Kurdistan is hazardous, especially between the main cities of Erbil, Duhok and Sulaimani. Cars share the same narrow road – where in places overtaking becomes extremely hazardous. The Duhok-Zakho road, for instance, has been dubbed “the road of death” because of the number of car accidents on the route.
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