More than 1,700 people die in traffic accidents every year, about four to five a day, making Guangzhou the worst city for traffic fatalities in China, Thursday's Guangzhou Daily reported. The city is now launching a "traffic safety week", to tackle the serious problem, calling on citizens to drive safely.

Statistics show that there have been only nine days on which there were no traffic accident deaths in Guangzhou since 2002. The death toll last year was 100 more than in Beijing and 300 more than Shanghai.

Altogether there were 11,565 traffic accidents in the city last year, killing 1,718 and injuring 13,492 people. Motorcycles are involved in most accidents. More than one million motorcycles are on city roads and last year there were 6,288 accidents with 755 deaths, about half of all the accidents and deaths for the year.

Most accidents were caused by drivers breaking traffic regulations. Deaths from traffic accidents were most likely to occur between 7p.m. to 10 p.m. Last year, 1,227 accidents involved pedestrians causing 231 deaths, most of them in Baiyun District.

The government has started renovating roads where there are frequent accidents. A protective wall was built in the Zengcheng section of the Guangzhou-Shantou Expressway. The wall, 45.5 km long and costing tens of millions of yuan, was finished at the end of September. The Zengcheng section was known as death road after eight were killed within 20 hours in June.

(Shenzhen Daily October 22, 2004)