Tue 17 Feb 2004
Justin points out that there are more deaths on roads per capita in California than in Ireland. On a trawl through the UK DfT website, I found these interesting statistics. Although the US has more deaths per head of population, they have fewer deaths per billion miles driven.
February 18th, 2004 at 12:43 am
Thanks Antoin!
So the US was significantly higher deaths per head, when the entire country is included — right up there with Belgium and Luxembourg. (yes, that’s what it seems to say! those nice Belgians are clearly insane drivers.)
Still, CA is looking good on accident rates.
February 18th, 2004 at 2:13 pm
The thing is that the Americans travel more by road than we do, and that distorts the per capita figure.
February 20th, 2004 at 3:50 pm
Kinda makes sense really - the US has thousands of miles of open space where the likelihood of actually hitting anything is reduced. Ireland, on the other hand, has lots of ditches, walls, buildings to crash into. And lots of idiots in Hondo Civics who don’t even know the difference between a red and a green light.
April 11th, 2005 at 8:02 pm
lower blood pressure
October 10th, 2005 at 2:26 pm
Road Traffic Accidents In Ireland:
1. Specific causes are never released after any investigation
2. An unusually high percentage of crashes are ‘head-on’
3. Blame is never assigned
4. No weight is ever given to the common practice of driving solo on a provisional license
I believe that a high percentage of accidents are drink related (hence the ‘head-on’ count) and many can be attributed to solo-learners unafraid behind the wheel as the Guardai turn a blind eye to the practice.
December 15th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
Oh my god people we are not living in America, please lets sort this road carnage problem out and stop people from dying. If everyone was more careful on the roads then accidents wouldnt happen. We are pulling families apart and the reason for this is that there’s that one person out there who needs get home quickly or someone who is late. If everyone took there time calmed down and didnt feel the need to show off in the big cars and feel the need to show the speed of their cars, all these things relate to this problem. Lets cut this out before more and more families lose innocent family members! Garda are partly to blame there should be more check points but what can the Garda’s do if there isn’t even on the beat, this goes to the question to the minister! As to why there aren’t enough Gardai to be out there!