China's traffic safety improves: report

BEIJING -- China's traffic safety has improved in recent years with less serious road accidents and a good flight safety record, according to the country's work safety and transportation authorities.

The number of serious road accidents, those that cause more than 10 deaths, has declined to 11 in 2016 from 55 in 2004, said a report jointly released Tuesday by the State Administration of Work Safety and Ministry of Transport.

Meanwhile, China's aviation industry has maintained 87 straight months of safe flights, the best air traffic safety record in history, the report showed.

However, the report said road accidents were still frequent in China, with the annual death toll from road accidents ranking the second highest in the world.

About 10 percent of China's road accident fatalities occurred on expressways, it said.

As of the end of 2016, the Chinese mainland had nearly 4.7 million kilometers of highways and 13.52 million trucks. In the first ten months of this year, China's highway freight volume reached 29.96 billion tonnes, according to the report.