China's road accidents kill 30 children a day, says WHO
Tougher traffic safety laws needed as car ownership grows rapidly, says group
The World Health Organisation's representative in China has called for tougher road safety laws, with traffic accidents killing up to 10,000 children on the mainland each year as car ownership escalates.
"That's almost 30 [children dying in road accidents] each day … They're kids just doing what normal kids do - travelling in cars with their families, walking or playing in the streets, going to and from school," Bernhard Schwartländer said in a speech in Beijing marking the UN's Global Road Safety Week.
Schwartländer urged lawmakers to put in place strict road safety laws and to ensure they were enforced. He called on manufacturers to produce good quality cars, and parents to make sure their children wore helmets when riding bicycles.
The figure did not take into account those children who were injured but not killed.
The WHO said on Wednesday that at least 200,000 people died each year on the mainland as a result of road accidents.
The figure was significantly higher than the country's official statistics. The Ministry of Public Security said about 87,200 people died in about 426,000 road accidents in the first 10 months of last year.
A global study published last year by medical journal pointed to road injuries as the third-leading cause of death on the mainland, ahead of a range of cancers, compared with eighth in the developing world.
Experts said the high fatality rate was because of poor driving behaviour exacerbated by a rapid rise in car ownership. They also said traffic accidents had grown more alarming than other disasters such as mining accidents.
In 2003, there were 24 million cars on the mainland. But by last year, the number had grown to 154 million, the public security ministry said.
Thirty-one cities had more than a million cars each. Eight cities, including Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hangzhou , had over two million cars while Beijing had more than five million.
Two cases of road rage this week have left the public stunned. An elderly man was killed in Yunnan province in one case, while a woman was brutally beaten in Sichuan province in the other.
In the Yunnan case, the elderly man was crushed to death by the driver of a Mercedes-Benz, after they argued over the driver jumping a queue.
In the Sichuan case, the woman was forced to stop her car, dragged out of her vehicle by a male driver and kicked several times on the head. The man allegedly did so because the woman had been swerving dangerously on the road, scaring his wife and child in the car.
In Beijing last month, two men, aged 20 and 21, crashed their cars while racing a Ferrari and a Lamborghini on a highway. They have since been charged with dangerous driving.
