According to the statistics produced by Mongolia’s traffic police, car accidents took on average 420 lives per year and injured more than 1,200 people in the last four years in our country that has a population of less than three million. A lot of people were injured and spent days in the hospital. Unfortunately, the number of car accidents is going up by a two-digit number every year. In comparison, the United States, which has a population of 315 million, lost approximately 440 soldiers every year for a decade of war in Iraq. How many more lives have to be lost in this undeclared war of car accidents?
The 2013 traffic police statistics suggest that drivers were at fault for 97 percent of a total of 18,400 car accidents, while pedestrians were at fault for 2.6 percent, and road conditions caused 0.2 percent of accidents. It is the drivers who are at fault for speeding (in 1,486 cases), driving under the influence (1,820), and violating traffic rules at road junctions (1,910). Inattentive driving and lack of spatial awareness caused 2,290 and 4,888 car accidents respectively. If we can investigate such causes thoroughly and analyze them properly, we will be able to stop putting so many lives at risk. This kind of investigation might reveal many faults, such as failure to switch headlights, driving in both lanes, and sidewalks being traded by senior officials. This article discusses two of these faults that are directly dependent on the government and us.
1. FORGOTTEN ROAD MAINTENANCE
The government has picked up a habit of building a road and almost completely forgetting about its maintenance after the completion of its construction. After commissioning any bitumen road, mid-term road maintenance has to be done after four to six years to increase the thickness of the surface by two to three cm and repaint lane lines. The politicians who are evaluated on the length of the roads they build rather than their quality do not think beyond the next election and solely focus on completing construction work. Furthermore, the government does not allocate much funding for road maintenance.
The width and thickness of roads are reduced to accommodate the funds given as bribes to win tenders. It cuts the budget of a project and decreases the quality of the final product. Also, poor inspection does not help the situation. As a result, new roads built in Mongolia start having cracks and potholes after only a year. The funds allocated for road maintenance are received years later and can be ten times less than what they were supposed to be. The funds are not enough to do anything more than fix a few big potholes, refill several cracks, and re-erecting some poles.
How can a driver have spatial awareness when most of the paved roads in Mongolia have not had proper maintenance in a long time and no longer have white lines on them? It is absolutely sad that many precious lives are being lost because of the potholes that appear due to faults of the incapable, unaccountable, and corrupt government.
2. LIFEBELT
The 2013 traffic police investigations revealed that about 75 percent of drivers and passengers who were involved in a car accident did not wear their seatbelts while only four percent of them were wearing their seatbelts at the time of the accident. It was not definitively concluded if passengers were wearing their seatbelts in about 20 percent of all the cases. Drivers and passengers do not wear seatbelts or use child safety seats when traveling in the countryside. It leads to fatalities when there is an accident.
Using seatbelts reduces the risk of injury and death in a collision by 40 to 65 percent. A study shows that a person who does not wear a seatbelt is four times as likely to have a concussion than those who are wearing their seatbelts. Also, half of the people who do not wear seatbelts receive facial, head, and spinal injuries. An American friend, who was a traffic police officer for his entire life, once told me that he had never pulled out a dead person who had worn his seatbelt in a car accident.
The traffic rules of Mongolia require drivers and passengers to wear seatbelts at all times in vehicles equipped with seatbelts. Although we are increasingly seeing improved compliance to these rules, there is almost no culture where passengers in the backseat wear their seatbelts. We are still carrying our children on our laps without any protection.
Many countries in the world have laws that require everyone in a vehicle to wear seatbelts. Regardless of whether it is required by law or not, we must always use seatbelts when traveling in a car. However, we still do not fully understand the need, despite losing hundreds of lives. Seatbelts must be worn before the vehicle starts moving. It is time to demand taxis and the buses that travel between cities to always have their seatbelts ready for use.
We also need to take the social cost of car accidents into account. The traffic police data suggests that car accidents caused 2.5 billion tugrugs in damages, 74 percent of which has been compensated, in the first half of 2014. There is a cost as big as one-third of our economy created by car accidents. We need to stop all types of faulty car insurance policies and introduce an accident prevention plan.
How precious is the life of a Mongolian?
2014.08.06