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Half of the total number of registered road accidents occur in Maputo and outskirts. File photo / For illustration purposes only
The number of road traffic fatalities in Mozambique has been declining over the years, but remained above 1,300 in 2017, according to a report by the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
The document is based on the records of the Mozambique Police and shows that the number of deaths fell from 1,782 in 2015 to 1,588 in 2016 and to 1,354 in 2017.
Almost a third of the people killed in road accidents of 2017 lost their lives after being hit, the most common accident reported by the police, followed by collisions and running off the road and overturning.
The total number of accidents is also falling: 2,666 in 2015, 2,212 in 2016 and 1,992 in 2017, about half of which are in Maputo and outskirts.
Deaths occur in a decreasing proportion of accidents’ victims. They were almost a third of the total people injured n accidents in 2015, but today the number of deaths is only 27.9 percent of the total number of people injured.
Mozambique’s road accident numbers are below neighbouring countries, according to official figures, but the country also has one of the least developed road networks in the region.
According to the 2017 data available in the INE report, about 74 percent of Mozambique’s roads are unpaved.
The province of Sofala has the greatest extension of tarred roads, 43 percent of the total in the region.
Mozambique’s car fleet has grown 52 percent in the last five years – from 483,977 vehicles in 2012 to 735,954 in 2017, according to data from the Ministry of Transport and Communications and the National Institute of Road Transport.
Distribution by province reveals that more than 86 percent of light vehicles and 74 percent of heavy vehicles are registered in and around the capital – in the areas of Maputo City and Maputo Province.
Zambezia, the country’s second most populous province, with five million inhabitants, has the lowest number of registered vehicles, with only 0.1 percent share of the total number of light vehicles and 0.7 percent of the heavy vehicles.
President Filipe Nyusi has appealed for safe driving.
A year ago, the president criticised irresponsible behaviour by some drivers after a collision between a passenger car and a heavy vehicle killed 13 people in southern Mozambique in an accident that was caused by an irresponsible overtaking. He urged society to denounce misconduct on the highways.
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