Saudi Arabia: 4 dead in head-on collision between a car and truck

Cairo: Two vehicles have collided on a road leading to Saudi Arabia’s holy city of Medina, leaving four people dead and one person injured.

The head-on collision occurred on Tuesday between a car carrying four Saudis and a truck driven by a Pakistani expatriate.

The four, who included a woman, died on the spot while the truck driver was hospitalised with multiple injuries. The cause of the mishap was not immediately clear.

In recent months, Saudi media reported several deadly accidents.

Last week, a passenger bus flipped over in Najran in Saudi Arabia’s south-west, killing one person and injuring 28 others.

Days earlier, another bus, carrying university students, collided with a car in Saudi Arabia’s central city of Buraidah, leaving one female student dead and 24 others injured, their university said.

In April, three people were killed and four others injured due to a road crash blamed on rainy weather in Taif in western Saudi Arabia

In March, 21 Umrah pilgrims were killed and 29 others injured when their bus turned over in the south-west Asir region.

Saudi authorities have toughened penalties against traffic offences to reduce road crashes.

The annual cost of traffic accidents in Saudi Arabia is estimated at around SR11.7 billion.

Around 9,420 accidents were registered in the kingdom’s cities against 7,542 outside them last year, according to official figures.

Those accidents resulted in a total of 4,555 deaths.

Male drivers outpaced women involved in those mishaps, according to the report based on findings by a ministerial committee for traffic safety.