Top Killer of U.S. Travelers

[DandyDon]

We see families of 4 or 5 on scooters in Cozumel some - at night! Wild site. Driving a car around Coz or on the peninsula seems easy enough really but maybe the locals know to watch out for us gringos trying to translate the road signs and find our way to whatever. I don't want to ever drive thru Cancun again.

Wearing my cowboy hat while driving seems to get some extra room in most countries I've tried driving in. For me to drive in Dallas or Houston is a challenge tho. Country boy habits won't work.

Scott was the second poster in the thread that you started. I didn't count the originating thread starter as a post. Referring to Scot or Thal like that was just snarky and asking for argument.

Scot posted third (second replier) but you can count to two however you chose. I start with one. The posts are numbered.

Have you priced canaries lately? :shocked2:

 

[pjhansman]

I just returned from Istanbul.....where city driving makes the average Nascar or Incy race look slow.

Taxis were expensive, but the only way to survive. As a side benefit.....the taxi ride was typically more exciting than a 6 Flags rollercoaster.

 

[irishsquid]

The traffic in Jeddah really impressed me. I think the only traffic rule is "Inshallah"
I never saw so many Mercedes piled up and mated in my life.

 

[ZenDiver.3D]

The traffic in Jeddah really impressed me. I think the only traffic rule is "Inshallah"
I never saw so many Mercedes piled up and mated in my life.

Kuwait is the same way. We may have stickers that say, "God is my co-pilot," but they really think the miracle sits in the seat beside them.
I have seen amazing wrecks here, in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Saudi. They think the horn makes everything move out of the way.

 

[Hockeynut]

This is another "sky is falling" thread. Take a look at numbers and the rate of accidental death is probably the same as at home.

 

[Jax]

Buckle up and stay off of scooters

by Fran Golden, News Editor of AOL Travel

Travelers may fear terrorism, plane crashes and crime, but the top killer of Americans traveling abroad is road accidents.

According to a USA Today analysis of data from the State Department, about 1,820 healthy Americans were reported killed in road accidents in foreign countries between Jan. 1, 2003 and June 2010. That's nearly a third of all Americans who died of non-natural causes while abroad.

:huh: That's 1820 over 7.5 years. That's 242.6 per year, or ~20 per month.


On average, one American traveler dies on a foreign road every 36 hours, the newspaper says.

Of the deaths, almost 40% happened in Mexico. The second highest number of road fatalities occurred in Thailand, followed by the Dominican Republic, Germany and Spain.

The newspaper says Make Roads Safe, a non-profit group promoting global road safety, estimates that worldwide 25,000 travelers to foreign countries are killed in road accidents each year. The group blames a "lethal cocktail of killer roads, unsafe vehicles, dangerous driving and disoriented travelers."

The number of fatalities could increase to 45,000 by 2020 and 75,000 by 2030, as tourist numbers rise, the group warns.

From Road Accidents Top Killer of U.S. Travelers - AOL Travel News

20 People a month is a whole lot less than anything anyone does in their daily life. Why is this even a pertinent statistic? Road accidents are a top killer whether US or abroad. The location is statistically meaningless. I don't get it.

Edit: I see Hockey beat me to it.

 

[annlaur]

To me, driving in the US (or at least California and Nevada, I have no experience in other states) and driving in France can be compared to diving in a shallow, tropical location in 100 ft viz versus exploring a 150 ft deep wreck off Alaska by night.

I "learned to drive" in California when I was a nanny there. I took the DMV quiz (IIRC, 20 common sense questions -- I remember thinking that you'd really have to not speak English or be brain damaged to fail it), my American family taught me the basics, then I when back to the DMV with our automatic station-wagon, showed the DMV employee I knew how to signal and turn on the headlights, went around the block once with her (during which I managed to cut across 2 lanes at an intersection in order to make a turn…) and… got my licence !

I never got into an accident even though I was driving 60 miles daily during 2 years, because the driving there was so easy : 4 lane freeways, automatic shift, low speed limits, people staying in their lane, very little other traffic (no bicycles or passers-by sneaking up in front of you out of nowhere), easy parking, drivers usually respectful of one another…

Then I went back to France, where I had to take the French driver's licence.
Mandatory theorical and practical course : 10 hours in the classroom and 24 hours on the road. Cost was over US$ 1.000. (FYI, that's only for the regular car and up to 125cc motorcycle licence. When I decided to get the full motorcycle licence years later, I had to go thru an even longer training). It was anything but easy. I just looked up some statistics. In 2004, 37% failed the theory test the first time they took it, and almost half of those who did pass the theory failed at the driving test.

There's a reason for such hard training. Driving here is a challenge.
The towns in most of France were built before the car was invented. It's not like they could design traffic rules and roads as they thought most appropriate, then build homes and schools and businesses around that. Instead the roads had to adapt to the existing buildings, and then hundreds of rules had to be created to fit all of the different case scenarios.
So roads are narrow, streets have incoming traffic and intersections everywhere, you need to parallel-park with sometimes only 5 inches of leeway, the speed limits used to be higher (they've lowered them since), on the freeways you shift lanes constantly depending on your own speed and the speed of traffic (passing on the right is prohibited), the cars use stick shift, motorcycles often ride in between the lanes, in town people on foot will cross the road at the least expected time, a parked car door will open right in front of you all of a sudden, and to top it all, the French aren't the most considerate drivers in the world.
You have to be aware of your surroundings at all times.

It doesn't mean I would be safe to drive everywhere in the world. While Cozumel was a breeze to me, I didn't like being behind the wheel in Italy and wouldn't even consider it in Istanbul.
There's a saying I was told there which I found pretty true :
"In France, (stopping at) the red light is an obligation.
In Italy, it's a suggestion.
In Turkey, it's a decoration."

 

[Scott L]

20 People a month is a whole lot less than anything anyone does in their daily life. Why is this even a pertinent statistic? Road accidents are a top killer whether US or abroad. The location is statistically meaningless. I don't get it.

As some posts have indicated, traffic is much more chaotic in other countries...

 

[mikemill]

Buckle up and stay off of scooters

What does my Cuda have to do with road accidents?

 

[SC_Hoaty]

I particularly enjoyed the backroads of Germany, where the line down the middle of the pavement merely indicated the geometric center of the road's width - it did not separate "my half" from the "half used by opposing traffic." On several occasions I was happily motoring along, only to be passed from behind while oncoming traffic also passed in the opposite direction. The overtaking vehicle would put on their left blinker, and I was expected to move to the extreme right of the road. The opposing driver would also shift to the edge of their side of the road, and presto - room for 3 vehicles on a road with only 2 lanes.