Road Traffic Accidents The Number One Killer in Libya

To The Editor: It is estimated that 1.26 million people worldwide died in 2000 from road traffic accidents, 90% of them in low and middle-income countries. In 2000, the road traffic injury mortality rate for the world was 20.8 per 100,000 populations (30.8 in males, 11.0 in females) [1]. The Arab population constitutes 3.6% of the world's population and it owns 1% of the world's vehicles. Its human losses as a result of road traffic accidents (RTA) account for 4.8% of that of the world's losses [2]. It is estimated that the annual cost of road crashes is about 1% of the Gross National Product (GNP) in developing countries, 1.5 in transitional countries and 2% in highly motorised countries [3]. In Libya the situation is worse. It is a sad fact that road traffic accidents are the number one killer in Libya. As a matter of fact I consider it to be an ‘epidemic’ in all sectors of the Libyan society. There is not a day that goes by in Libya without us hearing about families, young men, women and children getting killed in horrific car accidents. It is alarming that young children are knocked down on a daily basis by speeding young drivers, whose understanding of driving skills may have been acquired from “playstation games”! (You can watch some of the shameful video clips sent by some of these drivers on this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doWEDjiHlVo) I feel it is our responsibility as physicians observing the situation to raise awareness about the scale of the problem, possible causes, and how to tackle it.