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Children under 5 are most at risk of dying from road accidents, with the percentage of infants that die due to traffic accidents almost double that of older children, a recent study has found. International NGO Save the Children, in coordination with the American University of Beirut, published the results of a first-of-its-kind report into the causes of child road injuries and deaths.
Samar al-Hajj, associate professor at AUB and the report’s lead researcher, said that infants under the age of 5 are particularly vulnerable to death from traffic accidents, since they can either be “ejected” from the vehicle if unrestrained or act as an airbag when sitting on parents’ laps.
To establish the impact of traffic accidents on Lebanon’s youth, researchers combined data from the Internal Security Forces and records from 30 hospitals across the country: The data showed 3,270 injuries and deaths among under-17s due to road accidents from 2015 to 2017.
Allison Zelkowitz, Save the Children’s Lebanon director, told The Daily Star that the ISF numbers alone were not enough, as hospital records provided more details on injuries, such as location and patients’ gender and age.
Road traffic accidents have largely been “a neglected public health issue” in Lebanon, Hajj added, as the 1975-90 Civil War shifted the of focus of research on injuries to the treatment of physical wounds sustained in fighting and mental illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder.
The 2006 Israeli invasion and the influx of Syrian refugees fleeing from war in their country have perpetuated this focus on war medicine, she explained.
Zelkowitz said that the report was therefore vital to addressing safety on Lebanon’s thoroughfares, since “we can’t design a program [to improve road safety] unless we have better data on what causes the injuries.”
Data showed that nearly half of all child road traffic injuries impacted “the most vulnerable” road users: pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. However, the distribution of injuries and deaths was not equal across geographical area, gender, age and nationality.
While children aged up to 5 represented the highest number of fatalities, it was 15-17-year-olds who sustained the highest proportion of injuries (45.2 percent), particularly striking as this age category only encompasses three years.
The report attributed this spike in injuries in late teens partly to a tendency among young men to “take risks” on the roads and drive cars and motorcycles without licenses or apt training. More than 72 percent of the victims studied in the report were male.
While the legal driving age in Lebanon is 18, researchers found 140 cases of children driving four-wheel vehicles and 313 driving motorcycles, some as young as 12.
When it comes to distribution by nationality, 65.5 percent of victims were Lebanese, 27.9 percent Syrian and 2.4 percent Palestinian.
Syrian children are particularly vulnerable to suffering injuries as pedestrians, Hajj said, and often fall victim to traffic accidents in areas where vehicles tend to drive at higher speeds.
For example in Bekaa, where many roads have multiple high-speed lanes in each direction, Syrian children made up 7 percent of the total number of recorded injuries and deaths, whereas Lebanese made up 6.8 percent.
“Many Syrian children in that area work in the fields and then walk along the side of the roads,” Hajj added.
Despite what the alarming data on child deaths and injuries might suggest, Lebanon does have a comprehensive road safety and traffic law - Law 243 - but it is rarely, if ever, implemented.
One of the law’s 420 articles makes seatbelts a requirement. However, the lack of compliance is linked to a high risk of mortality, particularly among under-5s, exacerbating the risk of mortality in the case of an accident.
Ramzi Salameh, the secretary of the National Road Safety Council, which met last week at a session chaired by Prime Minister Saad Hariri, said that while there was visible political will to improve traffic safety in Lebanon, bureaucratic obstacles stood in the way.
“In order for the law to be implemented, hundreds of pages of text need to be prepared,” he said, including an overhaul of the licensing system.
The causes of crashes and collisions that led to children’s injuries were divided into four categories: speed; careless crossing by pedestrians; distracted driving, which could include using cellphones or conversing with passengers; and other factors including loss of control and wrongful overtaking.
“Expectedly,” the report said, “speed is the greatest cause leading to tragic consequences,” resulting in 25 percent of crashes.
With these factors in mind, the report gave four main recommendations: establishing a national injury surveillance system; enforcing the road safety law; implementing road safety awareness programs; and investing in safer road infrastructure.
The infrastructural changes don’t necessarily have to break the bank, Zelkowitz said: “It can be as simple as adding barriers between lanes, or making sure there are sidewalks.”
Source: Daily Star
