LAHORE: The city traffic police in a detailed analysis prepared recently reported that 80 per cent of total accidents occur due to negligence of drivers.

Of these 80pc, 42.2pc were caused by rash driving followed by 7.97pc signal violations, the report added.

A team of traffic police comprising highly qualified wardens and IT experts prepared this analysis -- a copy of which is available with Dawn -- to help find major reasons of accidents in the provincial capital, and help authorities curtail the causes.

The team gathered data of all 251 accidents that occurred in all traffic sectors of the provincial capital from January to September.

Out of the total, 202 or 80.4pc occurred due to drivers’ fault, and 15.1pc due to various other reasons, including poor road infrastructure, unmanned railway crossings, under-age driving etc.

Classifying the 80.4pc accidents that took place due to the fault of drivers, the report states that traffic signal violation constituted 7.9pc of those accidents followed by 6.7pc for not using helmets and 5.9pc while overtaking.

Driving on a one-way road was also found to be a cause of many accidents with 4.3pc of the total. Zigzag driving, overloading and use of mobile phones have also been reasons for accidents. Driving without proper lights constituted 1.99pc of the accidents and break failure 1.2pc.

The report also considers the effects of fog and bad weather stating that 5.98pc accidents occurred due to these reasons. Underage driving resulted in 2.39pc of the accidents, the report states.

Only 0.8pc out of the total accidents occurred due to use of mobile phones while driving. While interestingly most of the fine tickets were issued to motorists for using mobile phones while driving.

A traffic police official who drafted this report said the World Health Organisation (WHO) in its recent report declared that injuries have emerged as a growing problem globally. He said according to the WHO, injuries in road crashes are the top cause of deaths followed by homicide and suicide.

“The WHO predicts that the road traffic crashes would become the fifth leading cause of death by 2030. Currently, it is at the 9th position world over,” the official said, quoting the WHO report.

He said keeping in view the global impact, the city traffic police decided to adopt a modern approach to deal with this issue, and as a first step gathered statistics and prepared an analysis to devise future strategy.

To a question, the official said traffic police experts were also preparing another analysis to try and dig out facts regarding dangerous roads where most accidents had occurred in the city.

Published in Dawn, December 3rd, 2017