Car Accidents in Saudi Arabia - Assignment Example

All of these factors directly or indirectly affect the behavior of human beings. If the behavior of a person is not effective or positive, his mental capacity is tormented. One such aspect of behavioral imbalance is the increasing rate of car accidents and how this disproportion can be managed through health promotion will be discussed in this paper. A traffic accident is defined as unacceptable and untenable damage done to life, money and the vehicle of a victim. It is also termed as car accident, car crash or Road Traffic Collision (RTC).

It happens when two or more vehicles come in contact with one another or pedestrians. The rate of traffic accidents in the passing year has been recorded by the World Health Organization to be 1,322,905. Nowadays, the rate of car accidents is seen predominantly in young drivers. Older drivers are mature and careful. This difference can be due to a number of factors. For young drivers, car is not only the source of transportation. It is a means of reflecting his or her individual and socials aspects of life.

For youth, over speeding and practicing dangerous stunts is self-expression. Also, they strive to stand out among their friends and seek to have an edge over others socially. As far as car accidents by adults are concerned, it is due to peer pressure of responsibilities. For instance, parents take the responsibility of driving their children to schools in the morning. All over the world, the mornings are saturated with office and school timings. This poses a risk to many lives. According to a research by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, children are eight times more vulnerable to dying in a car rather on a bus.

In fact, bus is considered safer to travel on. Saudi Arabia is considered to have the highest toll of road accidents in the world. In the era from 1971 to 1994, the amount of car accidents and associated injuries and fatalities have escalated by 30, 6 and 7 times. There could be a number of reasons for this notorious and unpopular ranking. Research has shown that according to the Kingdom’s General Directorate of Traffic around 17 citizens in Saudi Arabia die every day on the roads. According to the report of WHO, the victims are adult males in between the age of 16 to 36.

Furthermore, a news report by the Saudi daily Arab News the statistics reveal that 6,485 people had died while more than 36,000 were injured in 485,000 car accidents alone in 2008 and 2009. The cause of the tragedies varies accordingly. Some point out that it is because there are no other attractive spots for youth in the Kingdom so youth on a large scale especially teenager boys tend to take driving as their extra-curricular activity. (Walt 2010; WHO; Global Perspectives in Workplace Health Promotion 2010; Bener 2005) Yet another reason is that, there is a lack of situation awareness.

The educational institutes don’t have any mechanism for imparting road safety rules. The young drivers out of extreme behavior like over speeding and drifting on congested routes either run into a pedestrian, cross red lights or take unusual U-turns. There is no strict law and order and that is why the drivers feel free to breach the law. The local traffic police are even unable to control the situation because youth drivers are on a large scale. These