Monday, October 12, 2009

Traffic Accidents- some statistics

Anyone who has lived or traveled in Kuwait knows that our roads are famous (and not the good kind of famous). It turns out that Kuwait just hosted a conference on traffic safety. Here are a couple of interesting statistics:

Population of the USA: 304 million
Population of Kuwait: 3.5 million

# of traffic accidents per year in USA: 5.8 million
# of traffic accidents per year in Kuwait: 2 million

% US GDP lost to accident damages: 0.1%
% Kuwait GDP lost to accident damages: 2.5 %

US ratio of accidents to population: 1 accident for every 52 people (per year)
Kuwait ratio of accidents to population: 1 accident for every 1.75 people (per year)

Hmmm...yeah...and it turns out (surprise!) that a vast majority of the serious injuries and deaths are occurring among children and youth. I'm going out on a limb here, but perhaps the use of carseats and seatbelts for children just might make a difference in these statistics. Oh, and perhaps education on the basic rules of the road such as right-of-way, staying in your lane, maintaining constant speed, and staying more than 6 inches behind the next car when you're driving 80mph. Come on people, it doesn't have to be this way! Protect your families!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hahaha.. This is insane. And really sad. Missing you

sarah said...

do you need to add yourself to this blog posting about car accidents now that you kind of had your own?