There is a marked drop in road traffic accidents in Qatar, despite the increase in the number of vehicles and licence holders, it was highlighted during a virtual awareness seminar on Wednesday.

Qatar’s efforts to reduce road accidents and fatalities have yielded results with a drop of 2.8% and 8.3%, respectively, during 2019, it was announced on Sunday.

The International Traffic Safety Conference (ITSC), jointly organised by the Qatar University and the General Directorate of Traffic of the Ministry of Interior, on Tuesday underlined the necessity of effective investigations to identify the real causes of road accidents in the country.

The Ministry of Interior's General Directorate of Traffic Director General and the National Traffic Safety Committee (NTSC) vice-chairman Major General Mohamed Saad al-Kharji has called for more efforts on the part of the country's residents to reduce road traffic accidents (RTAs).

The committee was urged to monitor the plan's implementation and strengthen Qatar's global position in reducing road traffic accidents.

The United Nations Secretary General's Special Envoy for Road Safety, Jean Todt, lauded the efforts of Qatar to reduce the number of road accident deaths since the launch of the 1st Qatar Action Plan in 2013.

India's top court on Thursday ordered the shutdown of all liquor shops along state and national highways, in a bid to reduce drink driving in a country where road accidents kill 17 people every hour.

The upgrading programme for safety barriers along major highways in Qatar has led to the “extraordinary” reduction of traffic accident deaths in the last six years, according to an expert.

Traffic fatalities in Qatar have dropped to 105 up to July this year, down nearly 30% compared with the same period in 2015, data released by the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics (MDPS) show.

In a move aimed at simplifying procedures for motorists involved in road accidents, the General Directorate of Traffic has opened five traffic investigation offices on the premises of insurance companies in Qatar.

Two deadly road accidents in India's northern Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh killed at least 30 people and injured 24 others, police said on Saturday.

At least 73 people were killed on Sunday when two passenger buses and an oil tanker burst into flames in a head-on collision in eastern Afghanistan, in one of the worst road accidents in the war-battered nation.