2012 marked 50-year low in traffic fatalities

Road accidents, and number of victims, see double-digit decline over the past year

Ilan Ben Zion is an AFP reporter and a former news editor at The Times of Israel.

Policemen at the scene of a car accident, September 2012 (photo credit: Oren Nahshon/Flash90)
Policemen at the scene of a car accident, September 2012 (photo credit: Oren Nahshon/Flash90)

Israel marked a 50-year low in roads deaths in 2012, according to figures released by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) on Wednesday.

The tally of traffic accidents in Israel, the number injured, and the number of fatalities also marked double-digit drops in 2012 compared to the previous year.

The number of people killed on the road in 2012 was 263, the report said, 23 percent lower than in 2011 and the lowest figure in 49 years.

Police registered 12,484 accidents with casualties in 2012, 11.6% lower than the year before.

One thing the CBS emphasized was that using crosswalks wasn’t a guarantee of safety — 72% of collisions with pedestrians occurred at crosswalks.

The breakdown also found that men were three times as likely to be the driver in a car crash as women, with 74% of the drivers registered in accidents with injuries being men, and only 26% women.

The figures don’t include accidents involving Palestinians in the West Bank.

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