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U.S. Drivers Risk Their Lives on Foreign Roads

Unfamiliar roads, local customs, jet lag add to risk of driving abroad

By Dan Schlossberg
ConsumerAffairs.com

August 25, 2007

According to Make Roads Safe, a nonprofit organization concerned with global safety, nearly one-third of healthy Americans who died during the past three years while traveling abroad lost their lives in motor vehicle mishaps. In coming up with its 31 per cent figure, the group excluded heart attacks or other medical conditions that might have contributed to crashes.

The U.S. State Department confirms 719 deaths from motor vehicle accidents over the same three-year period but said those numbers, compiled from reports by families or media, could be higher.

Worldwide, traffic accidents kill 1.2 million and injure up to 50 million people per year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). A growing number are Americans driving in other countries.

Though problems facing drivers outside the United States vary, almost all are driving unfamiliar cars on unfamiliar roads with unfamiliar signs. Many are confused by local customs, such as driving on the left rather than on the right, or suffering from fatigue caused by jet lag.

Roads in Third World countries, including Mexico, often have poor lighting, inadequate guard rails, and such road hazards as horse carts and both domestic and farm animals.

Conditions worsen at night, since some local drivers don’t bother with lights, and in wet weather, when narrow roads are invariably more treacherous.

Throw in reckless or drunk drivers, including trucks or buses that pass on blind, uphill curves, and the mix is a witches brew of pick-your-poison.

Although seven U.S. oil and automobile companies have plugged $10 million into a Global Road Safety Initiative, experts think things are likely to get worse.

The World Health Organization and World Bank predicted in a 2004 report that traffic fatalities in high-income countries will fall 30 per cent by 2020 but rise 80 per cent in low to middle-income countries over the same period.

If present trends continue, the World Bank warns, road deaths will become the No. 2 killer of all men, ranking only behind AIDS, by the year 2030.

Mexico, the most popular foreign country for American visitors, is especially dangerous, with more than 280 U.S. citizens killed in crashes there from 2004-06.

Highway 1, stretching from Tijuana to Cabo San Lucas, has no guard rails, shoulders, or road signs but plenty of potholes – and plenty of crashes. It is one of the two-dozen most dangerous roads in the world, according to the Association for Safe International Road Travel.

Most of the others are in Africa, Central and South America, India, Pakistan, and China, with a handful in southern Europe and Asia Minor. A few others are in the United Kingdom.

Consumers considering driving abroad can protect themselves by learning about the roads, laws, and culture of countries they plan to visit; avoiding mountain roads at night or in the rain; hiring a driver familiar with local laws and customs; or taking mass transit where available.

Road safety reports from 150 countries can be found at www.asirt.org, the website of the Association for Safe International Road Travel.

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