[sustran] FW: Annual Death Toll of Global Accidents

Barter, Paul paulbarter at nus.edu.sg
Mon Jul 14 11:23:46 JST 2003


Dear sustran-discussers

I thought this would be of interest to many of you. I have obtained Ayad
Altai's permission to share this. 

Also, apologies for sending a message last week in mime format - those
of you using the digest version of the list would have seen only hex
code. Sorry! As mentioned before, this list copes best with plain text
only. 

Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: Ayad Altaai [mailto:aaltaai at erwda.gov.ae] 
Sent: Wednesday, 25 June 2003 7:38 PM
To: sustran at po.jaring.my
Subject: Re: Annual Death Toll of Global Accidents
Hi
 
I had the opportunity to scan through your new publication
"People-centered, Equitable and Sustainable Transport." I congratulate
you on this excellent effort. My immediate comment is to do with
reference to the total number of people killed in road accidents. In
para. 4 of Basic Principles..... the report states a figure of 500,000
people killed. Let me list the controversial figures that have been
going around for many years:
 
1.                   WHO reported that in 1993 the annual road accident
fatalities were 895,000. This figure was quoted by WRI Report in 1996. 
2.                   Allan Ross (WB Consultant) presented an annual
figure of 700,000 fatalities on 2 Feb 1999 at the launch of the GRSP
Initiative at the World Bank in Washington D.C.
3.                   After perhaps a year of work the GRSP issued a
figure of about 1.1 million fatalities.
4.                   The World recently stated that there the global
death toll is 500,000 fatalities.
5.                   Another department within the WB is stating that
the annual figure of global road fatalities is 1.17 million. 
6.                   Years ago IATSA newsletter quoted the late Clinton
Admin Transportation Secretary using a figure of 500,000 fatalities. I
responded to the Editor-in-Chief that the figure was not valid.
7.                   Finally if we accept the 500,000 fatalities for the
globe, it means the world average is similar to Sweden or Japan. Think
about it.
 
The 50 million injuries mentioned in para 4 is much closer to reality
that the fatality number. The debate on this number is much wider than
the fatality figure. However, a number of organisations still use a
range of 10-30 million. We should always remind the experts and the
public that there is a high percentage of unreported road fatalities and
injuries. This percentage reaches 50% in some countries, but never been
reported. 
 
My humble conservative estimates for 2002 are as follows:
 
Global Road Accident Fatalities: 1.2 million
Global Road Accident Injuries: app 60 million.
 
 
Best regards,
 
Ayad Altaai
General Coordinator
Abu Dhabi Global Environmental Data Initiative (AGEDI)
Abu Dhabi
UAE
Phone: +971-50-668 2616
Fax:     +971-2-681 4262
 
 
 



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