As bad as those U.S. numbers are, they are much worse in rapidly emerging automotive markets such as China, where millions of people with little driving experience are piloting their new cars and trucks among millions of pedestrians, motorcyclists and bicyclists -- many of whom seem to make up the rules of the road as they go along.
The result has been tragic. Officially, the Chinese government says 300 people die every day in vehicle crashes on the country's roads and byways. But the World Health Organization says that the real number is 680 traffic deaths a day. That compares with about 115 per day in the United States, where there are about eight times as many vehicles as in China, according to figures from the Chinese government and R.L. Polk & Co.
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(I recently was in Shanghai for one week. I personally witnessed three non-fatal vehicle crashes. I simply gave up counting near misses. The day I left, the Shanghai Daily newspaper reported a three-bus crash with 40 passenger injuries.)
Without urgent intervention, and with private-vehicle sales growing at a still-strong clip of 12 percent annually, the daily death toll on China's roads could reach 1,300 by 2020, the WHO predicted at a global safety conference in Geneva earlier this year.
Around the world, a total of 1.2 million people die in traffic accidents every year, according to the WHO.
The need to do more to make cars and driving safer is creating a multibillion-dollar product development and marketing opportunity for the world's leading automotive component and vehicle manufacturers. That sounds crass. But it is nothing short of the truth.
At automotive exhibits in Detroit, Geneva, Paris and Shanghai this year, automotive companies and their suppliers were just as keen to demonstrate their latest, greatest electronically controlled safety devices as they were to show off their newest offerings in horsepower, onboard entertainment systems and emissions controls.
That was especially true in Shanghai in early October at the 2004 meeting of Michelin's Challenge Bibendum, an annual exhibition of the world's most promising clean-car and automotive safety technologies.
On display were advanced passive safety technologies, those designed to protect drivers and passengers in vehicle crashes of about 35 miles per hour. Also shown were some concepts to reduce pedestrian injuries (something increasingly demanded by European and Asian governments) and advanced active safety technologies, such as electronic collision-avoidance devices.
There were also communications safety devices, such as General Motors Corp.'s OnStar system, which automatically calls law enforcement and medical officials to a crash location the instant the system detects an air bag deployment in an OnStar-equipped car or truck.
