Muscat: The Capital Market Authority (CMA) has said that more than RO25 million were paid as insurance claims for 76,200 traffic accidents in 2022. These included 15,300 major accidents and 60,900 minor accidents, an increase of 15.5 percent compared to 65,900 accidents in 2021.
Minor accidents constituted 64.3 percent of the total claims (RO12 million), a decrease of RO12.6 percent from the previous year.
Among major accidents, accidents with damages (12.4 percent) amounted to RO8.5 million, bodily injuries, and medical treatment (12.6 percent) amounted to RO4 million, and 327 deaths amounted to RO456,000.
Contrary to expectations, there was a fall in the indices for total paid compensations, which exceeded RO 24.6 million, a decrease of 12.6%.
Additionally, a decrease of 1.7% was also seen in the total compensation (both paid and not yet settled claims) which reached RO 84.7 million, in contrast to RO 84.7 million in 2021.
The indices for traffic accident claims recorded by insurance accidents indicate that the number of claims for minor accidents with damages only rose relatively to 64,400; compared to last year when they were 62,000 accidents.
In contrast, a decrease was seen in paid compensations for damages from RO 13.4 million in 2021 to RO 12 million only in 2022. Additionally, while claims for major accidents with damages decreased, major accidents that caused bodily injuries and medical treatment costs rose to RO 12,400 and RO 12,600 compared to RO 14,600 and RO 12,100, respectively.
There was a fall in the paid compensations for such claims, as the total major accidents compensations with damages decreased from RO 9.2 million in 2021
and RO 8.5 million in 2022. Paid compensations for major accidents that resulted in bodily injuries and medical treatment costs fell from RO 4.5 million last year to
RO 4 million.
As for the number of major accident claims that resulted in deaths, they also declined as they were 327 claims which caused a decline in paid compensation
as well at only RO 45,000 compared to last year where the number of major accidents claims resulted in 444 claims with total compensations of RO 1.4
million.
According to World Health Organization (WHO), every year the lives of approximately 1.3 million people are cut short as a result of a road traffic crash. Between 20 and 50 million more people suffer non-fatal injuries, with many incurring a disability as a result of their injury.
Road traffic injuries cause considerable economic losses to individuals, their families, and to nations as a whole.
These losses arise from the cost of treatment as well as lost productivity for those killed or disabled by their injuries, and for family members who need to take time off work or school to care for the injured.
Road traffic crashes cost most countries 3% of their gross domestic product.
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