COMCEC Transport and Communications
Outlook 2019
22
ROAD SAFETY IN OIC MEMBER COUNTRIES 1
Table 7 provides mortality statistics for countries in each of the three OIC regions; i.e. MENA,
Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. An interesting, and somewhat surprising result of Table 7 is the
relatively high mortality rate of five of the six high income (>15,000 US$) OIC member countries.
UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Saudi Arabia all have mortality rates that are significantly higher
than what would be expected in high income countries internationally. Of the high income
countries, only Bahrain has a mortality rate marginally below the expected norm. Turkey as a
middle income country also has a lower mortality rate than expected. Since these data do not
take into account important factors, such as the degree of motorisation (and amount of travel),
the results must be viewed with some caution. Although it is generally accepted that most high
income countries are highly developed with a high degree of motorisation, this is not always the
case. Countries such as Bahrain may be defined as high income, but are yet to experience
associated growth in motorisation and transport infrastructure development.
This analysis reveals that Saudi Arabia is a particularly interesting case with a mortality rate
about three times higher than the international norm. A possible explanation may be found in
the GINI index. For instance, Qatar, which is also a high income country with a somewhat higher
than expected traffic mortality rate, has a GINI coefficient of 41.1%, which is not extraordinary
high but 1.5 times higher than developed countries, such as Norway and the Netherlands.
Of the middle income countries (between 1,300 US$ and 15,000 US$ per capita), Libya and Iran
have remarkably high road mortality rates. The data for Libya reveal extremely high mortality
rates and should be treated with caution. Libya’s road mortality (734 per million) is some seven
times higher than what would be expected from an average middle income country and is more
than twice the value of the subsequent 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 per capita income level.
A third relevant group is the group of middle income countries and high population with a
relatively high mortality, i.e. Iran, Nigeria, Morocco, Algeria, Gabon, Lebanon, Kazakhstan,
Malaysia, Turkmenistan, Iraq, Suriname, Tunisia and Jordan. The mortality rate in these
countries may well be affected by factors, such as increased motorisation and urbanisation.
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, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
A next group is formed by most of the remaining low income countries, that almost all have a
high road mortality. For these countries, road mortality is not notably higher than the average
for all countries; yet, their mortality is still high whichmay offer opportunities to improve safety.
1 For a detailed account; see COMCEC, “Improving Road Safety in the OIC Member States”, 2016.