[sustran] Road crashes a growing world cause of death

[Paul Barter]

This was posted to the alt-transp list yesterday. It may be of interest
here too.

=======================================================

WASHINGTON, Dec 2 (Reuters) - 22:53  Tues.12-02-97

Traffic accidents -- now killing half a million people a year worldwide --
will soon be the world's third leading cause of death after heart disease and
strokes, U.S. experts predicted on Tuesday.

``Traffic-related injuries and deaths are growing worldwide at an alarming
rate, and even rising slightly in the United States despite stronger
education and law enforcement efforts,'' U.S. Transportation Secretary Rodney
Slater told a meeting in Washington.

``We must join together in a global traffic safety effort -- government and
business, science and health professionals, the entertainment and media
industries and everyday citizens -- to keep our streets safer and our
families more secure,'' he said.

Car accidents were the world's ninth ranked cause of death in 1990.

Half a million people are already killed every year in car accidents, a
report by the World Health Organization, the World Bank and the Harvard
School of Public Health found.

The report, compiled last year as part of the annual Global Burden of Disease
study but being re-released at the conference, found that 15 million people
were injured every year worldwide in traffic accidents. Most were young men
- -- a growing population that will peak in the United States between 2005 and
2010.

As poor countries develop their economies and their citizens use cars,
accidents will cost more and more lives, conference organizer Hans Holst of
Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology said.

``We have to make sure that as developing nations become more mobile, their
people have access to injury prevention information,'' Holst told the
conference.

Slater said U.S. highway fatalities were down to 42,000 annually from the
50,000 who died in 1967 and gave credit to safer cars and seat belt laws that
helped despite an enormous increase in traffic.

``But in 10 years, Americans will be driving even more,'' Slater said, as a
result of increasing prosperity.

``The number of deaths will rise by 50 percent by the year 2020 if we fail to
improve our current safety performance,'' he said. ^REUTERS@