According to the Economist newspaper, in many countries where the overall mortality rate is falling, road deaths have gone in the opposite direction. Road traffic deaths disproportionately affect low- and middle-income countries that suffer from weakness in their roads’ infrastructure, where 90% of global road deaths occur.
You might think that it is only a matter of a nation’s income and its infrastructure expenditure! But, after harnessing the power of the data provided by World Development Index, it turns out poor infrastructure is only part of the problem. What’s interesting is that although the high income & oil rich Arab Gulf countries have world class roads infrastructure, the data shows that they still suffer from high road deaths. As a result of this insight, it can be deduced that the other reason behind the high road deaths is the rising incomes in many developing countries & cheap petrol prices have led to rapid motorization, while road safety management and regulations have not kept pace. In other words, their relatively weak enforcement of traffic laws, leads to risky driving, eventually higher road deaths.
In a nutshell, sophisticated roads’ infrastructure can’t effectively lower death roads on its own and should go hand in hand with strict traffic law enforcement.