KP, Punjab responsible for 80% of total road accidents in Pakistan in last six years

• Road accident deaths in Pakistan decrease by 8% in last six years.
• PBS data shows KP and Punjab contributed to up to 80% of total road accidents across Pakistan.
• Mountainous areas like KP are more prone to road accidents because of dangerous weather and difficult road networks, explains retired senior police officer.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan recorded an 8% decrease in the total number of deaths from road accidents between a six-year period of 2015 and 2020, as per data from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.

Interestingly, the available data showed that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab contributed to up to 80% of the total road accidents across Pakistan, The News reported.

Mountainous areas like KP are more prone to road accidents because of various reasons, Afzal Shigri, a retired senior police officer, explained to the publication. More accidents take place there because of dangerous weather and difficult road networks.

Crime-related stats are also always under-reported, said Dr Shoaib Suddle, another retired police officer. He was surprised to see enormous figures of road accidents in KP despite fewer number of cars and people in that area compared to other parts of the country.

The data available with The News showed that over 40% of total accidents in Pakistan prove fatal. According to the data, a total of 68,322 road accidents took place in the last six years, out of which 27,629 proved fatal.

At 29,706 accidents, Punjab reported the highest number of accidents – both fatal and non-fatal. This made up 43% of the total accidents from 2015 to 2020.

KP, meanwhile, witnessed 25,040 road accidents, making up almost 37% of the total accidents. Sindh, Balochistan, Islamabad Capital Territory, Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir showed minimal road accidents as compared to those taking place in KP and Punjab.

The accumulative road accidents in these two provinces and three territories were not even half altogether of what took place in only Punjab and KP.

In Sindh, a total of 5,543 accidents took place in the last six years, whereas in GB, AJK, ICT and Balochistan, the number of total accidents from 2015 to 2020 were 1,007, 2,486, 1,373 and 2,536, respectively.