TEHRAN — Iran’s Traffic Police have disciplined 4,000 reckless intercity bus drivers for violating traffic rules or positive drug test, said Traffic Police Chief Mohammad-Hossein Hamidi.

The offending bus drivers who were caught over the past two months (June 21 to August 22) were banned from driving either permanently or temporarily, Hamidi noted, IRNA news agency reported.

He further explained that the number of the buses have quadrupled increasing to 16,000 over the past 10 years and fortunately the number of the accidents almost halved to 120 since 2007 up to now.

Commenting on the fatalities caused by buses Hamidi stated that the death rate had decreased by 60 percent from 2006 to 2015 dropping from 543 to 217.

Undercover police officers boarding intercity buses

There will be undercover traffic police officers boarding on the intercity buses to control the drivers’ traffic behavior, the Traffic Police chief Taqi Mehri said.

Mehri also added that the passengers can also text the number plates to the number 1101120 so that the police can easily crack down on the offending drivers.

To control the roads some 5,000 forces are across the roads as the number of the road trips are growing by the end of summer, he added.

Earlier this month, Mehri explained that by installing monitoring devices on the roads the buses will be controlled online from a one-kilometer distance so that the police can have access to all their information via GPS including their speed which help them in better regulating the bus drivers’ driving behavior under a scheme called “Sepah-Tan”. Mehri also highlighted that there are so far 300 speed control cameras on the roads which will grow to almost double by the end of the summer (September 21).

 180 dead, 2,000 injured over ten days

Over the first third of the Iranian calendar month of Shahrivar (August 22-31) some 180 lost their lives and 2,000 sustained injuries in road accidents, he said

The number of the deaths and the injured decreased by 2 percent and 5 percent respectively compared to the same period last year, Mehri noted.

Some 55 deaths a day on average

Over a report released by the forensics some 55 people died a day since the beginning of the Iranian calendar month of Shahrivar (August 22).

The past 10 years figures and numbers also indicate that some 22,000 people died over the month of Shahrivar in Iran.

Although there has always been a decrease in the number of the deaths from year to year for the past 10 years in the month of Shahrivar, reducing from 3,240 in 2006 to 1,718 in 2015, the deaths occurred in this month always accounts for a significant numbers.

The number of the deaths in the month of Shahrivar also exceeds that of Noruz holidays (Iranian New Year holidays falling on March 20 to April 1) as 968 died in 2015 Noruz holidays and 1,718 in the month of Shahrivar.

MQ/MG