Because of the interest in fast and luxurious cars that has been rapidly increasing over the past few years, the number of car accidents has also gone up in correlation. These accidents too often result in death or the victims ending up in intensive care units, severely and permanently injured. The concerns here are two-fold: too many youth are dying because of reckless driving and the health system is suffering because of it. The overall cost of these incidents is too high.
The National has reported that “one in five patients in intensive care units in two major long-term healthcare centers in the UAE is a young male victim of a car crash.” This pandemic is all too common in many regions across the globe, but the police in the UAE are trying to impose regulations and strengthen their abilities to lower these fatal accidents. Although accidents happen, not all of them are unavoidable. By providing more education to drivers, especially new ones, the police hope to lower these statistics. After all, the last thing that anyone wants to see is their loved ones become unable to take care of themselves or even die at such a young age.
At ProVita, one out of every five patients are the victims of car-crash related incidents. That’s 18% of their patients. Some of them have severe head trauma resulting in brain damage, others break limbs or become paralyzed – all of them suffer some form of depression.
Because drinking and driving is absolutely not tolerated in the UAE, the majority of these fatal crashes are a result of speeding. If the laws and regulations in place could be stricter, maybe these numbers could be lower. According to the Health Authority in Abu Dhabi, road traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for young males aged between 13 and 15, accounting for 10.4% of all deaths. In 2012, there were 514 injury deaths in the entire emirate, 303 of which were related to car accidents. That’s almost 60%! In terms simpler to comprehend, one person died of an accident every 28 hours. In 2013, the number of fatalities almost doubled. Something has to be done.
In the image to the right, you can see the car at the bottom of the picture absolutely decimated. The bodies laid out on the side of the road were new drivers. In the first half of 2013, first-year drivers caused 86 accidents, killing four people and injuring 139. Drivers with more than a year of experience caused 68 accidents, killing 10 and injuring 105. Those with a few more years of experience caused less accidents, while those with even more returned to the higher end of the curve.
Abu Dhabi, being the city with the largest reported number of accidents per capita in the world, has started to enforce speeding laws more strictly. Dubai police have introduced fines that are almost double what they were in an effort to dissuade drivers from speeding. Unfortunately, these laws will only go so far, but they are a start. Hopefully over the next few years, we will see the numbers of car-crash related deaths start to go down.
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