″Naked″ assessment does not reflect the reality

343 people died on Armenian roads in 2018: in comparison to 2017 the number of fatalities has increased by 64. An increase was also recorded for the numbers of road traffic crashes and accidents.

These figures are a real disaster for a small country like Armenia as, imagine, yearly one village population disappears from the earth and the number of fatalities is growing.

To prevent this road traffic disaster it is a must to make a comprehensive analysis to figure out all contributing factors of the rise of road traffic crashes. In this case it is not correct to analyze the situation and, moreover, to assess the situation as ″unprecedented″ taking into account only one factor: the increase of number of vehicles.

According to the Insurance Bureau of Armenia, 508,297 cars were insured in 2018, which was 10,459 more than it was last year. This number of imported cars cannot be considered as a cause for accidents itself. There are many other significant factors contributing to the accidents, such as:

• non enforcement of existing laws,
• the conditions of road infrastructure,
• non-sufficient technical maintenance of vehicles,
• the opportunities of road maintenance,
• the level of awareness of citizens.

The comprehensive analysis of the factors contributing to the accidents will equip the respective authorities enabling them to prevent road traffic crashes, not to struggle against the consequences.

An impeccably effective approach that has been repeatedly tested and succeeded in many countries around the world to our surprise, in the given case, is still not applied by the authorities. One of the reasons may be the absence of a systematized data collection and analysis. This should be one of the priorities of the state. Only after then we can clearly analyze the situation and do assessments.