With Easter Week coming up (11 to 20 April 2025), the local equivalent of spring break, media is alerting of the dangers that motorcyclists and motorcyclist racing represent for the general public. N Digital and El Dia have looked into the issue, raising all the red flags.
N Digital reports that Aníbal Germoso, of the entity Accidente RD, points out that clandestine motorcycle races are not only a high-risk activity, but the activity has grown to such an extent that there is now an Association of Motorcyclist Racers (Asociacion de Corredeores). While the group operates informally, he says it has codes, rules and agreements for the races.
N Digital also reports that in 2025, the Ground Transit Agency (Digesett) has seized 173 motorcycles used in the clandestine races nationwide.
N Digital mentions that the bets in the clandestine motorcycle competitions are of “astronomic sums.” N Investiga sources indicate these can reach up to RD$2 million, with the winners receiving 20% of the bets with a major underground financial organization supporting the underground races.
El Dia highlights that there are more than 3.5 million registered motorcycles, according to the Tax Agency. In reality there are more than double that amount when non-registered motorcycles are included. Regarding registered ownership, 1,204,862 motorcycles are registered in the name of men, while 432,256 belong to women.
El Dia calls for extra caution this month, especially during Holy Week. The media says that data shows that January, April, August, and December are the most critical months on the roads. Why? December and January probably due to the Christmas festivities and the increase in travel to other provinces. In addition, the combination of the Christmas festivities and the increase in alcohol consumption creates a dangerous cocktail on the roads. In April, there’s Holy Week, with its massive holiday travel, which also increases the danger on the roads.
Motorcyclists are said to be involved in more than 80% of the traffic accidents.
The statistics from the last two years (2022-2023) show, once again, how the country’s avenues and streets became the scene of tragedies that left 25,732 people injured in traffic accidents.
The daily average of those who suffered some type of injury in traffic accidents in the past 24 months is 35 people.
In 2022, roads throughout the national territory left 13,009 people with some type of injury from a traffic accident. And in 2023, that figure decreased slightly to 12,723, according to reports presented by the Citizen Security Data Analysis Center (CADSECI).
El Dia highlights that motorcyclists are the protagonists in traffic accident statistics. Motorcyclists are the ones who are most often injured, and the fragility of these motor vehicles, in which the body becomes the chassis, exacerbates the consequences. The lack of use of protective helmets in many cases increases the likelihood of tragedy.
The loss of human lives due to traffic accidents in the Dominican Republic represents a tragedy of comparable, and even greater in certain periods, magnitudes to that of the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to data from the Ministry of Public Health, between 2020 and 2023, 4,384 people died from the virus. The number of deaths from traffic accidents exceeds that of Covid-19 when comparing the same period of time (2020-2023). Deaths from traffic accidents for this period exceed 8,500 deaths.
Read more in Spanish:
N Digital
El Dia
2 April 2025