Colombia exceeded 100,000 deaths in traffic accidents in 15 years

This year, Colombia surpassed a sadly historic record by adding, in 15 years, more than 100,000 deaths in traffic accidents.

(Read: The 10 points where the most traffic accidents are recorded in Bogotá).

According to figures from the National Road Safety Agency (ANSV), 2023 was the year with the highest number of people killed on the roads since 2009, registering a total of 8,546 cases.

The figure was higher than the 8,469 that were presented in 2022. In fact, since 2020, the year of confinement due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the figure has always been on the rise.

These accidents led to 98,559 people dying on the country’s roads between 2009, the year in which the measurement of open data by the ANSV began, and until 2023.

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Nevertheless, Counting this year’s cases (which are partial figures), there are already 103,797 fatalities from road accidents in the country.

Antioquia, with 13,043 deaths; Valle with 12,699, Bogotá with 8,283 and Cundinamarca with 7,547, are the regions where historically the most people have died. In fact, in the case of the first department, the number of deaths has maintained constant growth since 2020, when it registered 711 until 2023, when the figure reached 1,116.

The data also means confirmation of a very worrying trend: that Colombia is one of the countries with the highest number of deaths per year in Latin America, according to figures recently released by the Ibero-American Road Safety Observatory (Oisevi).

This entity revealed, through its social networks, a preview of what will be its next ‘Ibero-American Road Safety Report’, in which it brings together figures on accidents, infrastructure and prevention on roads in the region of the 12 member countries of that organization.

In advance, the organization points out that, with a cut-off until 2022, Colombia appears in the first place of deaths due to road accidents in the region, with a little more than 8 thousand cases, followed by Argentina, which registered a figure which is around 5 thousand. Third place goes to the Dominican Republic, with almost 3 thousand deaths on the roads.

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And although no further details of this report have been released to date, the truth is that analysts, experts and victims agree that the only way to ever achieve a real reduction in the numbers of people killed by traffic accidents is a complex combination of citizen culture, improvements in road infrastructure and political will to strengthen and enforce the law.

Mobility experts, victims of traffic accidents and representatives of organizations that promote prevention and road safety, considered that the poor reduction in accidents and the persistence of victims among the most vulnerable road actors is a problem with three variables that, up to Today, it has been practically impossible to solve: lack of adequate road infrastructure, poor education of citizens and lack of determination to enforce the law, no matter how harsh it may be.

PORTFOLIO
*With information from the EL TIEMPO Data Unit