The number of road casualties has increased significantly in Iran, the regime’s traffic chief has admitted, even as Iran under the mullahs’ rule already holds one of the world’s worst traffic safety records with accidents being one of the leading causes of death in the country.
On Wednesday, January 12, Brigadier-General Kamal Hadianfar, the regime’s traffic chief said: “The number of casualties this year [Iranian calendar ending March 2022] has increased”. He put the blame on domestic car manufacturers who make “death chariots,” adding that in the latest deadly chain accident of some 50 cars in southern Iran, which killed 2 and injuring over two dozen people, “none of the cars’ airbags functioned.”
Hadianfar is infamous in Iran and despised for executing the regime’s strict censorship of online media and the brutal torture and killing of young Iranian blogger Sattar Beheshti while in custody when he was the head of the repressive cyber police. In addition to domestic car manufacturers, he tried to blame drivers for accidents in Iran while covering up the regime’s disastrous policies and criminal negligence.
His remarks come after protests for lack of safety on the roads by residents of Darkhovin in oil reach province of Khuzestan on December 26, 2021, following a deadly chain accident that had killed at least 10.
In another press conference on November 8, 2021, he had presented dramatic statistics on road accidents in Iran. “Every day, 45-60 people lose their lives in various circumstances involving car accidents. And for every person killed 15-20 are injured”, he said
According to Hadianfar, “During the past 15 years on average 19,541 have lost their life as a result of car accidents,” with some “15-20 percent more losing limbs or experiencing spinal cord injuries or paralysis.”
The official IRNA news agency reported on 23 May 2019: “The roads of Iran are smelling more and more like death year by year, according to statistics. … If we consider the average number of people who have lost their lives on the roads, with the averages of road accident injuries, it appears that we’re faced with a total war or an earthquake in Iran. But in some cases, deaths on the roads are even more than unexpected events like earthquake, floods or war.”
The state-run Khabar Online website wrote that there is an “endless story of the marathon of roads accidents”. “The casualties of car accidents in Iran are 8.5 times more than Germany, and fare only a bit better than Sierra Leone. Here we are speaking about a disaster”, the report said on 6 August 2019.
Analysts stress that the Iranian regime hides the main reason for such a high rate of deaths on Iran’s roads by emphasizing more on human error to overshadow lack of proper management, substandard road and infrastructure conditions, lack of proper education and funding. Instead of improving road conditions or implementing policies to improve safety on the roads for citizens, the regime diverts funding to its criminal enterprises.
But the truth is that more and more Iranians are losing their lives unnecessarily every year while driving in “Death Chariots” on “Death Roads.” This is because the economy is riddled with crises due to rampant state corruption, and the regime’s policies that prioritize export of terrorism, advancing its nuclear weapons program and expanding its suppression machinery to counter the restive society that many, even within the regime, have described as “a bomb whose eventual explosion is fast approaching.”
