Road accidents kill 1,890 Cambodians, up 10 pct in 2011

PHNOM PENH, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- Road accidents had claimed 1,890 Cambodian lives in 2011, an increase of 10 percent from 1,709 deaths in a year earlier, according to a report from the Ministry of Public Work and Transport on Tuesday.
The report recorded that there had been 5,007 road accidents happened in 2011, down 10 percent from 5,577 cases in a year earlier.
Besides the deaths, in the 2011's accidents, 8,554 people were injured, down 11 percent from 9,662 in 2010, said the report.
"We see that the number of the dead has remarkably increased despite the declines in accident cases and injured people," Preap Chan Vibol, director of the Ministry's Transport Department, told Xinhua on Tuesday. "We observe that road accidents are crueler than before."
He said about 45 percent of the accidents was due to over-sped driving, 11 percent was alcohol driving, 16 percent was neglect driving and the rest was violation of traffic law and vehicle problems.
Traffic accidents have become the No. 1 killer in Cambodia among those of HIV/AIDS and mine casualties. The ministry estimated that the accidents cost the country 279 million U.S. dollars in 2010.