Egypt's state statistics agency CAMPAS has said in a report that 2018 saw 8,480 road accidents in the country, down from 11,098 in 2017, a drop of 23.6 percent. In the report published on Sunday, CAPMAS said that deaths from road accidents decreased to 3,087 in 2018, compared to 3,747 in 2017. The number of accidents on highways was recorded at 23.2 accidents per day in 2018, compared to 30.4 in 2017. The report said that the decrease in road accidents was due to the state's renovation of road networks. According to the report, the main cause of road accidents was driver error, at 76.8 percent, followed by technical malfunctions, at 15.7 percent, and poor road maintenance at 2.7 percent. The report also said that there was a spike in train accidents in 2018, reaching 2,044, compared to 1,793 in 2017, a 14 percent increase. Deadly road accidents take place on a daily basis in Egypt due to poor road safety, badly maintained infrastructure, and loosely enforced traffic regulations. However, Egypt has allocated millions of pounds on developing and expanding road networks in recent years. In 2017, the government also passed a new, comprehensive traffic law to crackdown on violators and enhance safety and security. The law will go into effect in 2020. Last year, CAPMAS said that the number of road accidents in Egypt in 2017 dropped to 11,000 from around 15,000 the previous year.
