Amid NCR pandemic curbs, road mishaps kill 345 people everyday | Cai U. Ordinario (2024)

A third of vehicular accident fatalities in the Philippines are pedestrians, according to the latest report from the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Unescap).

In its Sustainable Urban Transport Index (SUTI) for Metro Manila and Impacts of Covid-19 on Mobility, Unescap said 34 percent of those killed by road accidents in the National Capital Region (NCR) were pedestrians.

Unescap also said despite mobility restrictions imposed by the government to prevent the spread of Covid-19, vehicular accidents in Metro Manila, or the NCR persisted. In 2020, a total of 345 Filipinos died per day due to transport accidents.

“The number of persons involved in accidents for the year 2016-2020 [showed] an average of 545 persons per day are involved in accidents with a fatality rate at 1.9 percent,” Unescap said.

“The breakdown of fatalities shows the unfortunate fact that fatalities didn’t just involve drivers and passengers but involved an average of 34 percent of pedestrians,” it added.

Based on the data, 75 pedestrians on average were killed due to road accidents in 2020. This was the lowest in a five-year period.

Data showed in 2016, there were 165 pedestrians killed by vehicular accidents; 162 in 2017; 142 in 2018; and 118 in 2019.

The average fatality among pedestrians is 138.4 representing 34 percent of total persons killed by road accidents.

Apart from pedestrians, the data showed 2020 killed the most number of drivers due to road accidents. A total of 243 drivers were killed, the highest in a five-year period.

The average between 2016 and 2020 was 213.2 drivers killed, representing 53 percent of the fatalities. Passengers killed averaged 51 or 13 percent of deaths.

“The data shows that Metro Manila’s accident and fatality rates are still not close to achieving the zero road traffic death target by 2022, which was set out in the Philippine Road Safety Action Plan,” Unescap said.

“Despite the mobility restrictions during the pandemic, the number of accident cases especially for motorcycles have not significantly decreased,” it added.

Based on data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), there were 6,440 deaths caused by transportation accidents between January and September 2021. This was a 4.2 percent increase from the 6,179 deaths caused in the same period in 2020.

Transport accidents accounted for 1.3 percent of total deaths in the country between January and September 2021, and 1.4 percent in the same period in 2020. In both years, transport accidents have been deemed as the 15th top cause of death among Filipinos.

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