at9

ISTR that US roads are in the middle of the league for death. UK is one of the better places with only the Scandinavians doing any better. In Europe, Belgium is usually reckoned as pretty bad. I hate to speculate about road deaths in the Middle East. Israeli taxi drivers all believe they are auditioning for a charioteers part in Ben Hur and it can't be any better in Egypt etc.

RPMindy

ok.. NY may no longer be the worse place to drive.. I can live with that. I just know one thing.. we've got a lot of idiots on the road who don't know what they're doing. unless in the US..we have a stricter way of qualifying who should drive and who shouldn't... we'll have one of the worse set of highways in the world.

thankfully.. some are paying attention and are better drivers.. but the whole mental make up of th US will not move in the direction of safer drivers any time soon.

by the way... speaking of africa.. when my dad lived there... he said if you had no idea of the mind set behind the wheel.. you'd be in a world of hurt.. he's driven in many third world countries.. you have to know the mindset to survive.. if not.. you're blow off the road.

so... either way.. everywhere has nutjobs on the road.. our job is to steer clear of them and not get hurt. sadly.. not everyone is that fortunate

RPM

p.s. even if your car was painted bright yellow with flashing lights.. some idiot will find a way to run into you eventually.. it's only a matter of time

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Guy N. Heels

I'll need some numbers before I back off of my statement that the US highway is the most dangerous place on Earth. In terms of annual deaths and injuries I know of none worse. America has easily had more people killed on the highways than the total number we've lost in ALL wars combined, and we are now reaching for that figure on an annual basis. While individual driving skills and specific situations may seem worse in some other locations, in terms of the total number of deaths and injuries, I know of none worse.

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Ozzard

Um. Sorry to jump in, but "lies, damn lies, and statistics."

Most dangerous per what? Mile driven? Minute spent in that locality? If you're simply talking "total deaths", I suspect (without proof) that there are more road deaths than deaths from jumping off bridges, simply because fewer people jump off bridges than drive - so presumably if one prefers to stay alive, one should jump off a bridge rather than drive. It's worth examining any set of figures and ensuring that the numbers can be used to answer reasonable questions.

In terms of deaths per minute spent in the location (or, put another way, chance of death per unit time), I suspect (again without proof) that jumping off bridges is higher-risk than driving, and that being on the streets of Iraq at present is rather higher risk than driving in the USA.

[Edit: Yes, even in New York :-)]

at9

Here are some numbers. They are based on road deaths as a fraction of total population. The numbers in the table are road deaths per 100,000 of population.

http://www.driveandstayalive.com/inf..._1988-2001.htm

My hunch about the UK being pretty good seems to be right but I think I owe Belgium an apology. Just look at Portugal!

The USA figures by state are interesting too. NY comes out pretty well, despite the hairy driving in NYC.

http://www.driveandstayalive.com/inf...apita_2002.htm

Ozzard

Cool - thanks for those. So, roughly, 1 in 5,000 (20 in 100,000) deaths is a road death. 1 in 3,000 is high, 1 in 10,000 is low.

Simplistically, assuming I live for 80 years and drive (or ride as a passenger) about as much each year, I have about (80 * 20) in 100,000 = 1,600 in 100,000 = 1.6% chance of dying in a road accident through my life. It's actually a hair lower than that as I should be taking into account early fatalities, but hey - it's in the neighbourhood. I'd expect it to be within a factor of 2, so somewhere between 0.8% and about 3% of UK deaths.

For comparison, lung cancer accounts for 6% of all deaths in the UK (source: http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/can...ung/mortality/ - potentially a biased source, I accept).

RPMindy

I love my NY drive when it's not rush hour.. I hate the slow pace and the mind numbing wait.. but I love my NY drive!!!!!

i made it sound real bad.. but to me... it's great :D

alot of great points made.. sure.. because so many of us are on the US roads.. we have a total number of injuries higher than most places... but as pointed out... other things kill more than driving.

what i do want to point out (and i don't have the quote from both the history channel and discovery channels).... other contries with higher safety standards are lowering the morbidity of the types of injurires faced on the roads and suggests that we can do the same at a more aggressive pace than we've been doing.

other than that.... yeah.. I love my NY drive.. nut cases and all. (the number of nut jobs seems to have increased.. but also the skill set to avoid getting hit seems to have gone up too)

RPM

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Guy N. Heels

Now yer hitting on all cylinders! The simple fact is that America has more vehicles and more road miles than any other country in the world. Therefore, something would be strangely outta whack if we didn't have: 1] the greatest number of road crashes; 2] the great number of road injuries; and 3] the greatest number of road deaths of any country on Earth. While I have absolutely no stats to back this up, my guess is that there are a minimum of 10 million people on the US highways at any given moment, and rush hours get far worse than that.
Yes, there are other killers out there that do indeed take their toll. But the fact remains that the US highway is the most dangerous place on Earth.

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