Families of crash victims stay behind with long-term psychological effects and financial burden
The Motor Vehicle Accident Fund (MVA) recently said it employs measures to ease the devastating psychosocial effects and financial burden placed on families by road crashes.
These burdens include among others loss of support, work or life disruption and unfavourable family dynamics that lead to diminished post-crash quality of life.
The Fund in a statement highlighted that psychological loss associated with crashes effects people of all ages, gender, colour, ethnicity and social setting, single mother headed households are mostly impacted, as they are distressed by the premature loss of their child and, partners and family members.
“As mothers, wives, sisters, aunts and friends, women are left with the grim task of caring and providing for family members and relatives or caring for loved ones who sustained life changing injuries in road crashes,” they said.
Moreover the Fund’s crash data shows that men are mostly likely to sustain fatal injuries in crashes, thereby leaving children fatherless thereby increasing their psychological distress. Since 2028 to date, the Fund has expended a combined amount of approximately N$3 million on 747 Loss of Support claims.
“This amount includes past loss and annual instalments, where, most of the beneficiaries are children below the age of 21 and female spouses who had no or little income and were financially dependent on the deceased spouse,” they emphasised.
Additionally, in order to condense the social cost of crashes, the Fund continues to raise public awareness on the negative effects of crashes on household and they have found out through data collated in 2019, that males represent 72% of persons killed din road crashes.
“We urge male drivers to acknowledge the risks they face as vulnerable road users and adopt safe road use behaviour to minimize the negative psychosocial impact of crashes within our communities, the impact is unfortunately long-term with devastating outcomes,” they concluded.
