ADDIS ABABA, Sept. 18 (Xinhua) -- A traffic accident in Burayu city, 18 kms north of Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, on Monday killed nine people and injured six others.
Sergeant Baysa Dida Burayu senior official at Burayu city traffic department said the accident occurred when a minibus carrying passengers collided with a heavy-freight truck.
The injured are being treated in Saint Paul hospital in Addis Ababa, with Dida saying police have not yet determined the cause of the accident.
Despite having one of the lowest per capita car ownerships in the world, deadly traffic accidents in Ethiopia are common with bad roads, flawed driving license issuance system and lax enforcement of road safety blamed for the high traffic accident fatalities.
Traffic accidents during the Ethiopian Fiscal Year 2016/17 that ended on July 8, has led to the deaths of 4,500 people, according to Ethiopia Federal Transport Authority (FTA).
The authority is toughening driving license regulations and is digitizing Ethiopia's transport regulation system at a cost of 95 million U.S. dollars in a bid to reduce the high accident rate on Ethiopia's roads.
With a growing economy and a rising middle class, the East African nation has for the past several years recorded an average of 11 percent growth in vehicle numbers.
