Developing world suffers worst road-death figures

[dArKeR]

THE OBSERVER , LONDON
Saturday, Apr 03, 2004,Page 6

There were flowers every few hundred meters or so at the side of the road from the Bolivian capital La Paz to the country's Yungas region further east.

The flowers marked the spots of a grim carnage. The road runs through a mountain pass, soaring above 5,000m in some places and narrowing to less than two meters. With boulders to one side and a sheer drop of hundreds of meters on the other, the road often could not cope with the press of traffic negotiating its uneven surface.

Typically this traffic is made up of lorries loaded with fruit and vegetables from mountain villages on their way to market, often with the villagers themselves sitting on top of their produce.

All too frequently, a truck goes off the road and plunges down the mountainside. Hence the flowers, laid over the years by grieving relatives.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2004/04/03/2003116504