Drivers fail to obey traffic laws, which many of the region’s governments notoriously don’t enforce. Cars must navigate crumbling roads and poorly designed highway systems that all but make gridlock and accidents unavoidable. And many drivers simply value perks such as alloy wheels and sound systems over unseen crumple zones.
Does all that seem to be obviously Thailand? Well, it is not. In Brazil, an analysis of Health Ministry data shows that 9,059 car occupants died in vehicle crashes in Brazil in 2010, according to the most recent statistics available. That same year, 12,435 people in the U.S. were killed in car crashes, though the U.S. passenger car number is five times larger than Brazil’s. The result is again easy to predict – Brazilian automobile crash victims died at four times the rate as those in the U.S.
Brazilian road toll.
However, to get the figures to make a bit more sense and be able to be compared with one another, it is better that we should look at fatalities per 100,000 head of population. Brazil’s is 19.9 per 100,000, while Thailand’s is 19.6 per 100,000. The USA by comparison is 12.3 per 100,000.
However, we are not the worst in the world – Eritrea’s stats are 48 deaths per 100,000 of the population, but I can’t think of any good reason to go there!
Nevertheless, our figures are scandalous, and even more galling is the fact that in Thailand, the group most killed are young motorcyclists, not wearing a helmet and full of hooch. The target group is known, but nothing is being done, other than lip service.
