Manama: A horrific accident between two vehicles on a Saudi highway has claimed the lives of six people.
One car carrying two people and another carrying four people were traveling on the Old Coast Highway in western Saudi Arabia when they collided head-on late on Saturday afternoon.
Police patrols and crews from the Red Crescent and the Civil Defense in Makkah rushed to the scene. No one survived the crash and the ensuing fire, a source told Saudi news site Sabq.
A spokesperson for the Red Crescent confirmed the fatalities, saying they received a call at 4.16pm from a Saudi citizen informing them about the accident on the highway, near Tufail village. Three crews were dispatched overland and two by air.
Saudi authorities have engaged in efforts to curb growing numbers of deadly traffic accidents. Official statistics indicate that a car accident happens every second and 17 people are killed in crashes every day on average in the kingdom.
Around 25 per cent of the accident-related deaths happened in the region of Makkah in the western part of the country.
Makkah also tops the list in injuries with 27 per cent of the country’s tally. The capital Riyadh leads in the number of accidents with 28 per cent.
Campaigns by the authorities to bring order to chaotic driving and boost a more positive traffic culture have often been resisted by unruly and speeding drivers, prompting the installation of rigorous monitoring systems with traffic cameras on highways to check speed and at the traffic lights in major cities to record red light jumping.
The authorities plan to expand Saher, the monitoring cameras system, to all regions of the kingdom by 2018.
