Asia | A daily massacre
As countries grow richer, safety measures take time to catch up
|Delhi|6 min read
EVERY THREE and a half minutes, by the Indian government’s reckoning, one of its citizens is killed in a traffic accident. That adds up to 150,000 people a year. But in all likelihood, the carnage is much worse: the World Health Organisation (WHO) thinks there are 300,000 traffic deaths in India a year—more than there are people in Barbados. That is not just a function of India’s enormous population. China has roughly the same number of people, but its authorities count just 58,000 fatalities each year. In fact India, home to just 10% of the world’s registered vehicles, accounts for 22% of traffic deaths, the World Bank estimates, using WHO data. It is a daily massacre, taking place in full public view but provoking little consternation.