Muscat, The number of traffic accidents dropped by 71.6% during the past five years, comprising a decline from 4,721 in 2016 (1 accident every 2 hours) to 1,341 in 2020 (1 accident every 6 hours), showed the latest statistics issued by the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).

Also, statistics indicated that due to these accidents, 1365 were injured and 371 died. Omanis comprised 75% of the number of injuries and 64% of deaths caused by traffic accidents in 2020.

According to the statistics, 39.4% of traffic accidents were caused by collision between vehicles. As for accident causes, over speeding topped the list as the major cause of accidents by 702 incidents, comprising 52.3% of 2020’s traffic accidents. Reckless driving led to 226 accidents while negligence caused 206 cases. Another reason that caused 88 accidents was not keeping a safe distance between vehicles. Forty accidents took place due to vehicle defects, then 30 more accidents were caused by wrong overtaking and 49 accidents were caused by other reasons.

The number of registered vehicles in Oman reached 1,560,000 by the end of 2020 comprising a 1% increase from 2019. Of those vehicles, 78.4% were private vehicles.

Omanis made up 86% of the total number of private vehicle owners. On the other hand, private vehicle owners (20-50 years old) comprised 93%.

Source: Oman News Agency