December 16, 2006

The Traffic is Terrifying

I have mentioned before the traffic situation here in Brazil. Today the Prensa Latina came out with some statistics.

One in 10 Brazilians Have Car Accidents - Prensa Latina

One in 10 Brazilians Have Car Accidents

Sao Paulo, Dec 15 (Prensa Latina) Brazil´s National Transit Department and the Applied Economic Research Institute reported Friday that there are over 184,000 auto accidents on federal highways (population 186 million) annually, leaving 10,000 people dead a year.

In 2004, there were 190,731 such accidents with 10,186 dead and 87,728 injured.

Annual loses from federal highway auto accidents reach 3.4 billion dollars which, added to state and local highways and road accidents may reach over 10.1 billion dollars.

Transit official Edson Gaspar commented that deaths from car accidents do not upset the population as do air crashes, pointing out that the auto accidents on freeways, highways and roads are equivalent to one Boeing crash every other day.

Posted by Andrew on December 16, 2006 5:59 AM.