OK, I have some numbers to kind of sum up what the traffic is like here.There are 250,000 vehicles here in Sana’a. 40,000 of those are taxies and 15,000 af those are busses. The article states that the number of cars has doubled in less than two years. That means that two years ago there were 125,000 cars here. Keep that in mind for these next statistics. Between 1995 and 2006, there were 40,141 accidents, 32,969 injuries caused by accidents, and 2,398 deaths caused by accidents here in Sana’a. The numbers are a little skewed since the only accidents that are reported are the really serious ones. I can assure you that the dizzying number of fender benders are not reported, hell traffic barely slows down for them… In any case, we can forget trying to figure out the deaths per accident because there are so many unreported accidents. We can look at the number of serious accidents as compared to the number of cars here though. Even if we go with the current number of cars, that means that 1 in 6.2 cars were involved in a serious accident over the past 11 years. remember, these are only the serious accidents, 1 in 1.2 of those accidents resulted in “injuries” (presumably requiring a trip to a hospital), and 1 in 16 resulting in a death.
I don’t have the US numbers to compare, but that seems really high to me. Just from anecdotal experience, I have been involved in two accidents, neither of which would be reported in here in Yemen, and a couple of fender benders in 20 years of driving. Not only that, but I drove amongst many, many more cars and at much greater speeds. One of my accidents was caused by snow and ice (and maybe the driver:-), once again, neither of which is an issue here in Sana’a.
Part of the reason may be enforcement issues. There are 1,343 traffic wardens posted here in Sana’a but with only 15 patrolling vehicles and 45 patrolling motorcycles. And get this, they only have 45 “wireless communication transmitters.” There are copious citations issued, a mind boggling 2,122,097 (yes, that is 2 million) between 1995 and 2006. Keep in mind that until 2004, there were only 125,000 cars here! They have a “plan” to clean up the traffic over the next 20 years or so, but I think their first priority will have to be combating the totally insane drivers. I have yet to ride with any local that I would consider a good driver here. I have no idea how to address that, but they better while there is only 250,000 cars here instead of millions…