SULAIMANI (ESTA) — More than 470 people have died in traffic collisions in the Kurdistan Region in the past 10 months, according to official statistics.
Today marks the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, which takes place on the third Sunday in November every year.
Nearly 1.3 million people die each year from fatal road traffic crashes and between 20 and 50 million people suffer non-fatal injuries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
In the Kurdistan Region, more than 3,509 traffic collisions have been recorded in the last 10 months, according to the general directorate of traffic police.
Up to 476 people died and 5,384 others were wounded in the crashes, the directorate’s statistics showed.
“Every 24 seconds a life is cut short because of a road traffic collision,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement.
“I urge every country, company and citizen to support local and global efforts to make roads safer, especially in low- and middle-income countries where more than 90 per cent of the world’s road fatalities occur,” he added.
