Road accidents take heavy toll on Southeast Asian economies

Road accidents take heavy toll on Southeast Asian economies

P. Parameswaran
Agence France-Presse
Manila

Saddled with the world's worst road safety records, Southeast
Asia is losing a whopping US$11 billion annually from motor
vehicle accidents, and experts are warning of even greater losses
unless governments take swift action.

A key reason for the road crashes is the increasing number of
motor vehicles, especially motorcycles, catering to the rapid
growth in the resource-rich region, the experts from the Asian
Development Bank (ADB) and the World Health Organization (WHO)
said.

Losses caused by road deaths and injuries as well as damage to
vehicles were inhibiting economic and social development and
worsening poverty in Southeast Asia.

"Road crashes impose costs on countries of around two percent
of their annual gross domestic product (GDP) and, on this basis,
the cost to the ASEAN countries is estimated at over $11 billion
annually," said Charles Melhuish, a transport specialist with the
Manila-based ADB.

"The situation will likely deteriorate even further unless
urgent and effective action is taken to help" member states of
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) "make its
roads safer," he warned.

ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia,
Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam,

Melhuish said road accidents in the region caused "recurring
economic losses" which "undoubtedly inhibited economic and social
development."

Statistics show that road crashes in ASEAN disproportionately
harm low-income groups because pedestrians and bicycle- and
motorcycle-riders are the "most frequent casualties," Melhuish
said.

"When a household head is killed or disabled, poverty is
significantly perpetuated or even increased."

According to the ADB, although governments in the ASEAN region
had developed action plans on road safety, their recommendations
"had in general gone unimplemented" due to ineffective
coordination mechanisms and inadequate budgets and technical
resources, among other reasons.

Following a request by ASEAN, the ADB has approved a technical
assistance grant of $500,000 to identify obstacles to road safety
faced by each country and devise a regional strategy to tackle
the problem, bank official said.

The ADB estimates that in 2000, ASEAN states suffered 72,800
traffic accident deaths and over 1.8 million injuries, many
serious or resulting in permanent disability.

But the statistics belie the true picture in the region,
analysts say.

In Thailand alone, 12,936 people were killed and more than two
million people suffered road injuries in 2001, 80 percent of them
motorcycle riders or passengers not wearing crash helmets,
according to the country's health ministry.

Precise figures on road accidents are difficult to come by
because many cases go unreported, said Ian Scott, a technical
officer in injury prevention at the Manila-based WHO Western
Pacific office.

According to the WHO, sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia
have the world's worst road safety records. It also warns that
road crashes will jump from the ninth to third most important
health problem by 2020.

Scott said that mechanisms adopted in developed nations, some
of which have slashed the rate of deaths and injuries from road
accidents by half-to-two-thirds, are not "immediately
transferable" to developing nations.

He cited the increasing use of child restraints in cars in the
developed world which has drastically cut down the road accident
casualty rate there.

"But if you wave the magic wand and have child restraints in,
for example, every car in Vietnam, you will still not be able to
drastically cut the injury or death rate of children because only
five percent of that country's motorized vehicle fleet are cars,"
Scott said.

There is a very proportion of two or three wheeled motorcycles
in ASEAN's vehicle fleet. Some 95 percent of vehicles in Vietnam
are motorcycles.

"The fact that most recent vehicle growth has been in
motorcycles exacerbates an already dangerous traffic
environment," said ADB's Melhuish.

For example, when the number of motorcycles in Vietnam
increased by 29 percent in 2001, road deaths surged by 37 percent
that year, he said.

ADB will present the ASEAN road safety plan for endorsement to
the group's transport ministers in September next year.

The bank wanted such high-level commitment for the plan's
smooth implementation, officials said.