10 most dangerous (and safest) countries for driving

[Fumesucker]

http://autos.yahoo.com/news/10-most-dangerous--and-safest--countries-for-driving-200422236.html

There are lots ways to die. There are also lots of people on Planet Earth tracking when and how people die. Two of those people -- Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle -- have compiled much of that data to show us where folks are most prone to die on the road.

The study is called Mortality from Road Crashes in 193 Countries: A Comparison with Other Leading Causes of Death (PDF). To compile their report, Sivak and Schoettle, who head up the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, pored over fatality statistics published by the World Health Organization in 2008. Though the two were keenly interested in traffic-related deaths, they also took note of fatalities from three other causes: heart disease, malignant neoplasms (shorthand: cancer), and cerebrovascular disease (shorthand: strokes). Then, they mapped that data, calculating the highest and lowest fatality rates associated with each illness, the fatality rates associated with auto accidents, and how the former and latter overlapped.

<snip>

1. Namibia (45)
2. Thailand (44)
3. Iran (38)
4. Sudan (36)
5. Swaziland (36)
6. Venezuela (35)
7. Congo (34)
8. Malawi (32)
9. Dominican Republic (32)
10. Iraq (32)

And the lowest fatality rates from auto accidents. Again, there's little overlap, other than Maldives:

184. Switzerland (5)
185. Netherlands (4)
186. Antigua and Barbuda (4)
187. Tonga (4)
188. Israel (4)
189. Marshall Islands (4)
190. Fiji (4)
191. Malta (3)
192. Tajikistan (3)
193. Maldives (2)

[LuvNewcastle]

1. Is a "collision," in their statistics, a collision with another car or just a wreck?

Most of the countries with low rates of collisions are very small countries that probably have few cars, or the people use other transportation besides cars, such as bicycles. The countries with high rates of collisions are mostly underdeveloped countries with a lot of rough terrain. The two countries that are exceptions in each category are the Dominican Republic and Switzerland.

The D.R. is a small country on an island that shouldn't have that many cars. I think there's some rough terrain there, but I'm thinking that the reason for their high number of collisions is just a lot of bad driving.

Switzerland is a wealthy country and well developed. It's small compared to the U.S., but it isn't tiny like the other countries on its list. There's also a lot of rough terrain in Switzerland, and I would think there would be plenty of cars. One would think that their rate of collisions would be higher. I guess Swiss drivers know what the hell they're doing.