ANKARA
Turkish Minister of Transportation, Maritime Affairs and Communications Binali Yildirim said on Wednesday that traffic accident was the top cause of deaths for Turks between the ages of 15 and 29.
Speaking at a traffic security symposium, Yildirim said although traffic accidents were the 11th cause of death in the world, it was on top rank among Turkey's 15-29 aged youths.
He reminded that each year over 1.2 million people were dying because of the traffic accidents and 20-50 million got hurt.
Yildirim added that there was a relation between the number of the people, who died because of traffic accidents, and the development level of the country.
Noting that investments on traffic, infrastructure and roads aimed to keep people alive, Yildirim stated, "in the past ten years, we made big investments in the dual lane roads. We rendered one over three of our road network to dual lane roads. There are 65 km road network under the responsibility of highways, and we rendered 22,500 km of it to dual lane roads. It might seem short in numbers, however more than 80 percent of the traffic in Turkey is on these roads."
Yildirim said that EU aimed "zero death" in traffic accidents by 2020 and it set fatal accident rate as maximum three in every 100 million vehicles/persons.
Noting that rates in Turkey decreased from 5.72 under 3 within the scope of this criteria, Yildirim said, "it's a big development but not enough. We have to continue on making investments in human."
