“India Leads World In Road Deaths”

After spending almost a month total time in this country, this headline strikes me as nothing but hilarious. I’d love to ask the reporter one question: “Ya think?” Here’s some interesting facts from the article:

• 13 People die every hour due to accidents.
• The highest deaths are to truck occupants, followed by motorcycle riders and passengers, with pedestrians at a surprising fourth place with only 9% of the fatalities.
• 114,590 people died in road accidents in India in 2007, the highest in the world. We’re number 1! We’re number 1!
• To put it into perspective, the US has ¼ of the population of India and had 42,642 road deaths in 2006. This calculates out to about 1/12 of the road death rate per capita.
• Tamil Nadu is fourth in India states road death rates, but with some effort, I think they can make number 1. Come on, guys, let’s pull together!

This is kind of like the article we read right before we got onto the train for our journey south that said about 10 people die every day on the Mumbai commuter train system alone. Most of those deaths are from overcrowding: people are either pushed out of the train or are hit by poles as they hang out the side of the train. The second leading cause of deaths on the train is from people injured crossing the tracks. Big surprise!

This article also illustrates a point I’d like to make about perceived danger vs. actual danger. India has experienced about 30 deaths from swine flu, and every day we see more and more people with masks on out in public. But they don’t stop hitting the streets, they don’t stop piling onto the motorcycles 5 at a time, with mom on the back, sitting side-saddle and cradling an infant. The article blames speeding and lack of restraints as the problem for the deaths, and only one person quoted in the article points out that India’s transportation authority lacks any kind of traffic safety department. So India will keep on keepin’ on, throwing resources at a swine flu panic while its citizens smash themselves to bits on the roads.