Improving Road Safety
in the OIC Member States
67
An interesting, and somewhat surprising result from this graph is the relatively high mortality
rate of five of the six high income (>12 756 US$) OIC member countries. The United Arabic
Emirates (ARE), Qatar (QAT), Kuwait (KWT), Oman (OMN) and Saudi Arabia (SAU) all have
mortality rates that are significantly higher than what would be expected in high income
countries internationally. Amongst the high income countries, only Bahrain (BHR) has a
mortality rate marginally below the expected norm. Turkey (TUR) just falls outside the
definition of high income countries but also has a lowermortality rate than expected. Since these
data do not take into account important factors, such as the degree of motorisation and amount
of travel, the results must be viewed with some caution. Although it is generally accepted that
most high income countries are highly developed with a high degree of motorisation, this is not
always the case. Countries such as Bahrain may be defined as high income, but are yet to
experience associated growth in motorisation and transport infrastructure development.
This analysis reveals that Saudi Arabia is a particularly interesting case with a mortality rate
about three times higher than the international norm. A possible explanation may be found in
the GINI index. A high GINI coefficient indicates an unevenly distributed income. The GINI
indexes are published by the World Bank (World Bank, 2013), but are unfortunately not
available for all countries and these include Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arabic Emirates,
Kuwait and Oman. Qatar, which is also a high income country with a somewhat higher than
expected traffic mortality rate, has a GINI coefficient of 41.1%, which is not extraordinary high
but 1,5 times higher than developed countries, such as Norway and the Netherlands.
Amongst the middle income countries (between 1,046 US$ and 12,745 US$ per capita), Libya
(LBY) and Iran (IRN) have remarkably high road mortality rates. As mentioned earlier the data
for Libya reveal extremely high traffic mortality rates and should be treated with caution. In
Libya the traffic mortality rate is around seven times higher than what would normally be
expected from an average middle income country. The road mortality (743 per million) is more
than twice the value of the next high mortality country, which is Iran. In Iran, the mortality rate
is half of Libya’s and double that what is expected from a country with its pcGNI. The chance of
an average Iranian being killed in a traffic related incident is therefore significantly higher than
in most other middle income countries.
A third relevant group is the group of middle income countries and high population with a
relatively high mortality, i.e. Iran (IRN), Nigeria (NIG), Morocco (MAR), Algeria (DZA), Gabon
(GAB), Lebanon (LBN), Kazakhstan (KAZ), Malaysia (MYS), Turkmenistan (TKM), Iraq (IRQ),
Suriname (SUR), Tunisia (TUN) and Jordan (JOR). The mortality rate in these countries may well
be affected by factors, such as increased motorisation, urbanisation and demand for travel.
Most of the remaining middle income countries have a somewhat lower road mortality rate. In
these cases this could be explained by lower levels of motorisation. Increased affluence may
result in increased demand for travel and rising car ownership which could negatively impact
the mortality rates in countries such as Afghanistan (AFG), Bangladesh (BGD) and Pakistan
(PAK).