September 13-2013
Despite a guardrail down the middle of a highway, two buses collided head-on Monday night, erupting in flames and killing at least 63 people.
The crash occurred on the Tehran-Qom highway at about 11 p.m. Monday night. About two dozen more were injured and some of those may yet die.
The death toll was one of the highest for a traffic accident in Iranian history, if not the highest.
Highway police chief Mohammad-Reza Mehmandar said the first bus was traveling north from Esfahan bound for Tehran when a tire burst. The driver lost control, hit a car, smashed through the guardrail on the medial strip, then careened down the opposite side of the highway and smashed head-on into a southbound bus going from Tehran to Yazd.
Both buses erupted in flames on the impact. The fire was so intense that many of the remains may never be identifiable.
Bus crashes have been a major problem in Iran, but few have happened on major highways. A typical crash involves a bus going at excessive speed on a curving road and either flipping over or running into an oncoming vehicle for failing to stay on the proper side of the highway. Bus drivers falling asleep have also been blamed for many accidents.
Iran has classically suffered from very high accident rates, but the scale of death on the highways has been going down in recent years. In the 1990s, Iran saw an average of 28,000 highway deaths each year, according to Agence France Press. But in the last two years, the toll has been about 20,000 a year, despite the fact that there are now four times as many vehicles on the roads.
Still, Iran’s rate of traffic deaths for its population remains very high. According to the traffic death rates per 100,000 population published by the World Health Organization for 2010, the latest data available, Iran ranks fifth among 184 countries.
Here are the top 10 countries and their traffic death rates:
Niue (Pacific island) 68.3
Dominican Rep. 41.7
Thailand 38.1
Venezuela 37.2
Iran 34.1
Nigeria 33.7
South Africa 31.9
Iraq 31.5
Guinea-Bissau 31.2
Oman 30.4
By comparison, the rate in the US was 11.4 and in Canada 6.8.