mindalai said:
Interesting list.
The ward I work on has several isolation rooms and it's a rare day when we don't have at least a couple of TB patients in them. And this is in a hospital in a large, modern city in Britain. It does tend to be people who've caught the disease overseas but it's still a big problem. I'm more surprised to see RTAs in the top ten.
We have a fairly good record in the UK and the "West" nowadays, however, the rest of the world does not.
Some quotes from "Make Roads Safe, Everywhere" by Saul Billingsley, Deputy Director FIA (Federation Internationale de L'Automobile).
"Welcome To Delhi...this is a city which experiences more than 1500 road deaths a year. Nationwide [in India] around 100,000 people die and at least half a million are badly injured on the roads. These injuries cost at least 3% of India's GDP."
"The Institute of Safety & Human Factors in Pakistan estimates that 95% of drivers on Pakistan's roads have not taken any kind of proficiency test. One in three vehicles on the road in Pakistan will be involved in an injury accident at some stage."
"It is a similar, grim picture across the developing world. In China, road deaths are predicted to double by 2020. In Vietnam, which has recently experienced a huge rise in motorcycle use, 500 children are dying every month - often as bare-headed pillion passengers."
"In South Africa up to 16,000 people die on the roads each year."
"The World Health Organisation estimates that, each year, almost 1.2 million people die in road crashes worldwide, and as many as 50 million are injured or disabled. Every month a silent tsunami of road traffic crashes sweeps away 100,000 lives."
Some British statistics....(from ADI News, March 2007)
"As the number of cars on the road has steadily increased each year, the number of crashes has steadily decreased in total. In 1961 there were fewer than 9 million licensed vehicles on the road, but by 1981 there were 19.3 million and 32.9 million by 2005.
If we look at the figures for road accidents in the 50s and compare them with today's, the improvements have been quite staggering and largely due to improved driver training. The number of seriously injured casualties was approximately 29,000 in 2006 and the number of deaths just over 3200. 140 of these were children. Recent figures for fatalities are 33% below the average of the mid-90s."
So, worldwide a pretty depressing picture, but here in the UK we actually do OK. Alright, that is no comfort to the families of those poor 3200 people, but 100,000 deaths a year in India is, frankly, terrifying.
And people moan that the driving test in this country is tough.....