New efforts to tackle Cambodia's rising road death toll

Fatal road accident in Kampong Cham (Photo: Koh Santepheap)

By Robert Carmichael
Jan 15, 2011

Phnom Penh (DPA)- A decade ago the main roads linking Cambodia's towns and cities were in such poor condition that four-wheel drive vehicles were lucky to average 30 kilometres an hour.

Today, thanks to reconstruction efforts, they can zip along four times as fast, narrowly missing pedestrians, ox-carts, cyclists and an array of others sharing the predominantly single-lane highways.

Better roads and low driving standards - there are just 51 registered driving instructors in the country - have had a predictable consequence: The number of road deaths has nearly doubled in five years to at least 1,649 last year, police say.

The final toll for 2010 will likely top 1,700 although that won't be clear until hospital figures are cross-checked against police data in the coming months.

But what is certain is that Cambodia has the worst road fatality rate of any nation among the 10 members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations bloc.

So says Preap Chanvibol, head of the government's land transportation department and a member of the National Road Safety Committee.

Cambodia's road fatality rate is around 12 per 10,000 vehicles, more than three times Malaysia's figure, for example.

The number of new vehicles taking to the roads has also soared as incomes have risen. In 2009, around 308,000 new vehicles were registered. In 2004 the number was just 38,000.

Preap Chanvibol says most new vehicles are motorbikes. They and much-improved roads make head injuries, speeding and drunk driving the three leading causes of road deaths.

Those facts have governed Phnom Penh's approach to tackling the problem: A 10-year action plan, which awaits the prime minister's signature, to try and curb the rapid rise in accidents.

'We have focused on the speed limit, drink driving, and helmet-wearing,' he says.

But other factors are also at work. For a start, although enforcement of traffic laws has improved in the past two years, it remains mixed.

Another problem is that the newly-refurbished national roads carry all manner of traffic, from pedestrians, bicycles and plodding ox carts, to trucks, buses, minibus taxis and cars - all travelling at different speeds.

Hospitals are still poor, which lowers the chance of surviving a crash.

That explains why the number of road deaths is unlikely to drop in the next decade. The aim of the proposed 10-year plan is simply to slow the rise.

Sann Socheata is the road safety project manager for Handicap International Belgium, a non-governmental organization that focuses on disability-related issues.

She says the government took a key step two years ago when it brought in a law requiring motorbike riders - but not their passengers - to wear crash helmets.

Prior to that, fewer than one in five drivers wore a crash helmet. Now more than four-fifths do, and in the main centres such as the capital Phnom Penh the traffic police fine those that fail to obey the law - during the day at least.

But since traffic police head home at sundown, the number of helmet-wearing citizens plummets after dark.

Despite that, says Sann Socheata, the law has shown its worth: The proportion of fatalities from head injuries has dropped from 86 per cent of road deaths to 76 per cent.

'Of course it's not really a big drop because (for) motorbike passengers it's not compulsory to wear a helmet yet,' she says. 'The helmet-wearing rate among passengers is still very, very low - it's just around 10 per cent.'

Sann Socheata says the data underscores the need to extend the law to cover motorbike passengers as well, something the government has said it will do.

New drink-driving checkpoints in Phnom Penh and two other parts of the country should also help to slow the rise.

Another change is that traffic police will soon start working nights, and fines for transgressors will probably rise. The police, who are poorly paid, keep a percentage of any fines they levy, which provides an incentive to enforcing the laws.

Despite these improvements, campaigners expect the country's road death toll will keep rising as the roads get quicker and more crowded.

Sann Socheata says statistical modelling indicates that if the government's 10-year plan succeeds, around 2,240 people will die on the roads by 2020. But should nothing be done, hundreds more will die each year.

Cambodia's roads will likely get more dangerous for some years yet before its drive for safer roads succeeds.