Pedestrians account for 38% road accidents

The image of Chawezi Mwafulirwa on a walk with his late son at sunset is seared into his memory. It is a simple and ordinary scene that turned catastrophic. Chawezi, a 37‑year‑old clinician based in Blantyre, lost his 11‑year‑old son, Charles, in October 2024.

The two were on a routine evening walk through their Machinjiri Township neighbourhood when a vehicle mounted the sloping verge, struck them and dragged them into a ditch. Charles hit his head and was pronounced dead on arrival at Mlambe Mission Hospital; Chawezi escaped with minor bruises. “The driver tried to avoid potholes and I guess he lost control by swerving to the sidewalk.

“It’s a loss that tore my heart,” he says, his voice still raw. Since that night, the wound has not closed. He agreed to speak to Nation on Sunday to unburden some of the grief and to give a human face to a grim statistic: Charles, sadly, became a statistic; one of the many vulnerable pedestrians whose lives are lost annually in road accidents—and in 2025 alone—accounted for a majority of road accident deaths.

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Records from the Directorate of Road Traffic and Safety Services (DRTSS), which Nation on Sunday has seen, show that 1 034 people were killed in road accidents in 2025. Of those, 401 or 38.78 percent were pedestrians, making them the single largest group of fatalities. Passengers accounted for 291 deaths (28.14 percent), motorcyclists commonly known as kabaza at 162 (15.67 percent), pedal cyclists 94 (9.09 percent), and drivers 85 (8.22 percent).

There was only one animal driver that was killed, representing 0.09 percent. Pedestrians account for a majority of the road accident deaths despite DRTSS records showing 50 of the accidents attributed to pedestrian negligence, with the majority caused by varying driver behaviour. According to the 2025 Africa Status Report on Road Safety, pedestrians, cyclists and motorists account for 50 percent of total fatalities with the estimated economic loss from road crashes reaching up to three percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in a majority of African countries, including Malawi.

Our further review of DRTSS records show that 494 people were seriously injured with pedestrians accounting for 22.47 percent, passengers 47.57 percent, pedal cyclists 5.67 percent, drivers 10.32 percent, motorcyclists 13.77 percent and animal drivers 0.20 percent. About 3 601 people were slightly injured and drivers accounted for 12.41 percent, passengers 43.46 percent, pedestrians 20.69 percent, pedal cyclists 7.14 percent, motorcyclists 16.19 percent and animal drivers 0.11 percent. But while reckless driving has often been the common narrative of road accident causes, road safety experts attribute them to Malawi’s poor road conditions and lack of protective road infrastructure as some of the invisible causes. Road Safety Alert Foundation executive director Joel Jere in an interview on Tuesday said the fact that pedestrians alone account for 401 deaths in a single year is not just a statistic, but a systemic failure.

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