Why the silence on road fatalities?


Easter in Australia is a major 4-day long weekend at the beginning of autumn. Many people go on holidays, visit friends, go to football matches, and so on. A diminishing few even go to church. It is also one of the worst times in the year for motor vehicle deaths and injuries. There is always a massive campaign before and during Easter to bring these increased dangers to public attention in an effort to reduce the road toll. As a result, along with compulsory seat-belt legislation, the death toll has plummeted. But Easter is not the only time of the year when the road death toll is highlighted - there is also the Christmas and New Year period (peak summer vacation in Australia). I am writing this at Easter time in the US and it has struck me that there is not a peep by anyone or anybody about the road death toll at this or any other time of the year. One hears nothing ever about this topic. Very curious, so I did some research and found an international (OECD countries) comparison of road fatalities which is quite enlightening. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has published a report in 2002 making international comparisons, which include US statistics. [More]

Easter in Australia is a major 4-day long weekend at the beginning of autumn. Many people go on holidays, visit friends, go to football matches, and so on. A diminishing few even go to church. It is also one of the worst times in the year for motor vehicle deaths and injuries. There is always a massive campaign before and during Easter to bring these increased dangers to public attention in an effort to reduce the road toll. As a result, along with compulsory seat-belt legislation, the death toll has plummeted. But Easter is not the only time of the year when the road death toll is highlighted - there is also the Christmas and New Year period (peak summer vacation in Australia). I am writing this at Easter time in the US and it has struck me that there is not a peep by anyone or anybody about the road death toll at this or any other time of the year. One hears nothing ever about this topic. Very curious, so I did some research and found an international (OECD countries) comparison of road fatalities which is quite enlightening. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has published a report in 2002 making international comparisons, which include US statistics. [More]

They compare fatalities three ways: road deaths per 100,000 population, road deaths per 10,000 registered vehicles, and road deaths per 100 million vehicle kms travelled. I took the figures based on population. In 1975 Australia had a road death rate of 26 per 100,000 population and the US had 20.7. In 2002 Australia had a road death rate of 8.7 per 100,000 population and the US had 14.8. So in absolute terms in 2002 1,715 Australians died in road accidents and 42,815 Americans died in road accidents. Another way to look at these figures, in the light of the war in Iraq, is that slightly more Australians died each year on the roads than American soldiers have died in two years of war and occupation Iraq; and that the American road deaths per annum are about 2/3 of all the US soldiers who died in the Vietnam War (58,000) or just under half of the estimated number of Iraqi civilians who were killed in the first 18 moths of the Iraq war (100,000 according to the British medical journal The Lancet )

What I find striking is the deafening silence on both matters: the absence of commentary in the papers here about the annual death toll on the roads, and the continuing carnage in Iraq.

Posted: Fri - March 25, 2005 at 11:13 PM        

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