By accident

[Ciro Pabón]

I was browsing accident rates by country and, suddenly, I wanted to know how they could influence my life (or yours). Here is what I got:

I started calculating the chances of someone in your closer family being killed (by closer, I mean the 5 persons closest to you) before you reach 60. Well, one chance in 20 or so. I don't think this will frighten the majority.


Then, I moved to your closer family being injured. Better than 1 in 2 in some countries. In some countries, USA included, it's a certainty. Caramba!


What are your chances of killing someone with your car? Here's what I got, to my surprise (surprise because of the eight-fold variation):


And what about injuring someone with your car? It seems unavoidable... Better than 100% chance! Actually, 200% in some countries.


Finally, only for some countries in South America, the chances of crashing in ten years:


I hope you brake a little earlier next time... and you better take that pilot course you've been postponing.

Here is the Excel file with the data, just in case: http://ciropabon.googlepages.com/AccidentsByCountry.zip

[Carlos]

Ciro - Reading the graphs I noticed right away that the numbers for my own country seemed skewered, opening the spreadsheet ( which is in Excel but I used Word Perfect ) I can see that the Canadian table is incomplete, although I am sure the numbers are available I suspect they were purposely not released and they seem to be misreported in that they are so minimal. What do you think? I don't think we drive that well here

Globally, what I was looking for, is the injury and death rates of pedestrians encountering incidents with vehicles, in different countries. Are these stats from insurance sources? What piqued my interest is an article on new European safety regulations requiring impact standards and equipment for vehicle pedestrian accidents. Do think the numbers of pedestrians injured justify standards to offer mandated regulation? Are the numbers significant, injury and death rate high enough to warrant regulation? Is it something that concerns road designers and national transportation departments? I would think the pedestrian may be easily overlooked as an economic class, perhaps they are made up of the young, old and poor - which are usually overlooked due to low economic impact (Ouch: no joke intended) or rather minimal insurance company payouts?

Anyone need software to open the file? I recommend freeware, that is file compatible.... and opens all of Microsoft's files - spreadsheet, word processor ect. - Open Office - It's a complete suite of programs - free - take a look:
http://www.openoffice.org/

[Ciro Pabón]

Countries with low vehicles per person rates have a lot of pedestrian accidents. AFAIK, in Colombia the number of pedestrian and cyclists dead are more or less equal to car drivers dead.

As for how good are the numbers, I don't know, I don't claim authority. These are figures I took from The Traffic Planning book we use in Bogotá. Canada only has some numbers, as many other countries, you might wish to fill the blanks in.

Yes, I know very well some rates are not comparable. I just want for the people that reads this thread to drive more relaxed, for them not to become another statistic (and, to add insult to injury, an unreliable one... ).

[Belatti]

Wow, those statistics shows Argentina is relatively good! I´m really surprised Cause here I see Highway heavy accidents almost everyday!!!

I have to tell that with 25 years, 9 years driving (2 ilegally) and never a scratch!
But... a school friend was killed 3 months ago in the road and a friend suffered several injuries in other acc last year, hopefully he recovered.

I think here they give driving licenses to anyone too easily and that a lot of cars that you find in the road shouldn´t be allowed to circulate, that together with a bit of better education should be enough to cut those numbers in two.
The other half of accidents happens on Saturday night/Sunday mornings and you all know why.