Accidents drop by 66% in five years: NCSI

Muscat: The Sultanate’s traffic system has seen significant improvement during the past five years in terms of traffic safety indicators, despite the increase in the roads network and the rise in the number of vehicles,  official data show.

The National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI)’s traffic data have revealed that the number of traffic accidents has declined during the past five years by 66.2 per cent to reach 2,120 from 6,279 in 2015.

The data also indicate that the traffic accidents time rate was down from one accident every two hours in 2015 and 2016 to one accident per four hours in 2019.
Muscat recorded 27.7 per cent of the total accidents in 2019, followed by the governorate of Al Dakhiliyah with 14.7 per cent, Al Batinah with 13.3 per cent, Dhofar with 11.4 per cent, North Al Batinah with 10.7 per cent, North Al Sharqiyah with 6.1 per cent and South Al Sharqiyah with 5.4 per cent.

The governorate of Al Dhahirah accounted for 4.2 per cent, Al-Wusta 3.9 per cent, Al Buraimi 2.1 per cent and Musandam  0.5 per cent.

The largest number of accidents was in the category of vehicle collisions, reaching 42.6 per cent of the total at 903 accidents.

This was followed by crashing with a fixed object, which reached 419 accidents (19.8 per cent), and run-over accidents, which reached 416 accidents (19.6 per cent).
The percentage of night accidents was 53 per cent of the total traffic accidents, while fast driving caused 51.8 per cent (1,098) of the traffic accidents.

The other reasons for accidents were divided between misbehaviour of drivers that caused 331 accidents, negligence, which caused 319 accidents, and failure to leave a safe distance, which caused 151 accidents. As many as 79 accidents were because of overtaking, 57 due to vehicle defects, and 85 due to other reasons.

As for traffic accident victims, the NCSI statistical data shows that there was a decrease in deaths by accidents in 2019, with only 511 cases, down by 24.3 per cent compared to 2015.

The  number of injuries also declined by 32.6 per cent, reaching 2,442 injuries.
Omanis accounted for 74.5 per cent of injuries by accidents and 62.2 per cent of the deaths. 46.3 per cent of injuries and 52.6 per cent of the deaths were caused by speeding.

Meanwhile the number of vehicles during the period of 2018 to 2019 was up by 3.5 per cent, reaching 1.55 million vehicles.
About 77.7 per cent of them were private vehicles, 43.2 per cent were white coloured cars, with the vast majority of vehicles (90 per cent) weighing less than three tonnes.
The number of new and renewed driving licences in 2019 reached 265,000, of which 98,180 licences were new and 166,402 licences were renewed.