Dying in Argentina: Let's Hope Not

Tomorrow I'm back off to Buenos Aires for a little under a week to sort out some business and to also enjoy large amounts of juicy, bloody dead cow (now the farmers' strike is over and there's plenty of juicy, bloody dead cow around).

Now I really like going back to BsAs and Argentina. It's such a fun and beautiful city with so much to do and see. I'm really looking forward to the trip. What I'm not looking forward to is the insanity on the roads. Argentine drivers are, by quite some distance, the worst drivers I've ever had the misfortune to have to deal with. They deliberately speed up if they see you crossing the road, don't respect traffic lights or any kind of traffic signals, make 1 lane into 23, deliberately try to knock down cyclists (I used to cycle in BA), drink and drive, text and drive, write letters and drive (I had a taxi driver writing a letter to his mother telling her how much he loved her-I could read it over his shoulder) and generally do anything possible to drive as dangerously as they can. When my brother visited me in Buenos Aires, he refused to get inside another taxi after just 3 journeys. If anyone thinks driving is bad in Chile (it's really not) then don't ever go to Argentina, it's a million times worse over there.

An accident a couple of days ago left another 6 people dead, taking the total for the year to over 4000 people. At the moment, the average is 22 people dead every single day of this year. This will exceed 8000 dead if the current rate continues, beating last year's average by 1 extra person per day. Compare this to England, a country with about the same population as Argentina but with far more cars on the road, where about 1500 people are killed in accidents with a further 1000 cyclists and pedestrians, making 2500 traffic related deaths per year. The Argentine stats don't specify if they include pedestrians and cyclists killed by careless driving-I strongly suspect they don't.

Bear in mind that we're talking only about the people who have died in accidents, not the people who have been maimed or not so seriously injured. That number is probably 100 times beyond the death figure (at least that's the ratio mentioned in the link to the England accident rate).

Luchemos Por La Vida is a non-profit that tracks the carnage and puts adverts on telly in Argentina. There is no government sponsored campaign to stamp out the madness.

This road based insanity is one of the reasons I prefer to live in Chile these days.

Hopefully, I'll be back blogging next Wednesday...if I'm not run down by a psychotic bus driver...wish me luck :)