CAIRO, Dec. 21 (Aswat Masriya) - Deaths from car accidents in Egypt in the first half of 2015 dropped by 7.2 percent year-on-year,  the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) said on Monday.

In a report published by state news agency MENA, CAPMAS said accidents in the first six months of 2015 left 2,808 people dead, a drop from 3,025 in the previous year. Nearly 9,000 people were injured in accidents from January to June in 2015, also lower than the 11,060 injured during the same period in 2014. 

The drop in deaths comes in spite of a 3.5 percent increase in the number of accidents, which reached 6,919 during the six-month period in 2015, compared to 6,685 the year before. 

The deadliest month was June, in which 541 people lost their lives on the road, a little less than a fifth of all deaths in the same period.

The deadliest provinces were Suez followed by Fayoum, while the least deadly was the province of Daqahliya.

Egypt is infamous for poor road safety and a high number of travel accidents, costing thousands of lives every year.

According to a 2015 World Health Organization (WHO) report, 10,466 Egyptians were killed in accidents in 2013. 

According to the WHO report, there are no policies in Egypt that promote cycling and walking or ones that separate vulnerable road users from high speed traffic but the attitudes of drivers may also be part of the problem.

It is estimated that only 13.7 - 18.5 percent of drivers in Egypt wear seat belt and as few as 3.1 - 3.8 percent of front seat passengers do.

Today's CAPMAS statistics show a surge in train accidents in the first half of 2015, jumping up by 38.8 percent compared to the same period the year before. Deaths in train accidents climbed from 14 in the first six months of 2014 to 42 in the first six months of this year, an increase of 200 percent, the report said.