Sunday, April 08, 2012

If this were a disease, would we do something about it...

I was reading about how the installation of Speeding Cameras in Qatar dropped the fatality rate (no link). In that article, they mentioned that traffic accidents was the leading cause of death in developing countries for young adults which led me to search out some sources and I found this one from the WHO. Pretty sobering. The New York Times has an follow up article on a successor study.


Traffic injuries are the ninth leading cause of death worldwide, and public health experts say that without intervention they will rise to fifth within 20 years, surpassing AIDS and tuberculosis.
...
“Very few people realize that this is one of the leading causes of death in the world, and the leading cause of death for young people,” Dr. Krug said. “Because it happens one by one, here and there and not in mass events, it gets less attention.”
...
“However,” Dr. Krug said, “we know from anecdotal evidence that in some hospitals and surgical wards, almost half of the surgery beds are occupied by victims of road traffic crashes.”

Historically, traffic deaths have increased with a nation’s economic growth, but poorer countries can incorporate safety strategies into transportation and infrastructure plans now to avoid this pattern, said Tony Bliss, lead road safety specialist at the World Bank.

1 Comments:

At 8:35 PM , Anonymous Sarah @ Green Global Travel said...

This is very interesting. No one seems to think about it since it's not a huge event happening all at one time, but it's still food for thought.

 

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