IT'S OFFICIAL: KENYANS
ARE WORST DRIVERS ...

KENYA RECORDS HIGHEST ROAD
ACCIDENT RATE IN EAST AFRICA

www.coastweek.com

DAR ES SALAAM, (Xinhua) -- Kenya has the highest rate of road accidents in East Africa, according to statistics released from a regional road safety conference held here.

Kenya has over 3,000 deaths linked with road accidents, followed by Tanzania with 2,905 deaths and Uganda which recorded 2, 334 deaths last year, the local newspaper the African reported on Thursday.

Most of the road accidents in Kenya occur because most drivers do not have valid driving licenses, Kenyan Minister of Transport Chirau Mwakwere was quoted as saying during the "Make Roads Safe" Conference.

For his part, Tanzanian Minister for Infrastructure Development Shukuru Kawambwa noted that last year his country recorded 20,615 road accidents, an increase from 17,677 recorded in the previous year, while the deaths marked an increase of 12 percent over the deaths which occurred on Tanzanian roads in 2007.

He called for more efforts and actions as it is important to collaborate to instigate a decade of actions for road safety.

For Uganda , the eastern African country had undertaken short, medium and long-term measures to reduce accidents on Uganda roads through public awareness, engineering and enforcement, according to Ugandan Minister for Transport John Nsasira.

The Ugandan government will also spend 15 percent of the national budget between 2008 and 2011 each year on upgrading and maintenance of the road network, which carries 90 percent of the country's passenger and freight transport, he added.

At the continent level, Africa 's road deaths are currently over 200,000 a year and are predicted to rise by at least 80 percent by 2020, while by 2015, road crashes will be the No.1 killer of children aged five to 14 years, outstripping malaria and HIV/AIDS, the statistics showed.

Transport ministers from several African countries, including South Africa , were attending the four-day conference on July 7-10, which aims to discuss safety targets to reduce accident fatalities by half by 2015, according to the report.

Co-hosted by Federation International Automobile (FIA) Foundation, FIA African Council for Touring and Automobile, as well as the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the conference also serves as a curtain raiser to the global United Nations Transport Ministers Conference on Road Safety in Moscow in November 2009.

THEY HAVE NEVER BEEN TO INDIA !!!

I vote for Indian as the worst!

We were happy like hell that we survived which is not guaranteed - from the stats!

Oh Pippa, You tear my heart & my love of India into small pieces!

But I still love you!

Asian traffic chaos works! Do not ask me how, but it works!
I am not a lover of stats, you can make them say what ever you require, but where else do you get so many different classes & volumn of transport mixing it together along with beggers, hawkers & animals.

Having traveled a number of miles in India & other Asian countries I have only ever seen one fatal accident, the truck chassis made the corner but it's bodywork parted company & went straight on.

A couple of years ago I was in Candy - and decided to take a Tuk-tuk back to the hotel.... I was there with my wife and an elderly English couple. He worked for New Scotland Yard and still had a lot of young spirit in him for fun, action and a good laugh. My Italian competitive spirit came into action after a couple of G&T's and I decided ask to race back to the hotel which was on the other side of town.
We called for 2 tuk-tuks to take us back and crazily asked the driver to make sure we reached 1st - because who arrived last paid for dinner and drinks. The ladies did not find this funny - however the action really started as both drivers went into action avoiding cars, hundreds of bikes and other tuktuks, cows on the road and best of all elephants.
It was pure fun and danger but amazing how they managed to go against traffic, with traffic and on top of traffic without any accidents. Some of those boys I am sure will do well in rallies etc if they had the chance as they learn how to drive at very young ages.

Sorry kipper And yes you are right - and Cody as well!

We were waiting (have I already written that? anyway........) in front of a train barrier. On our side a bus, lorry, motor rickshaw, bicycle plus some cows and humans. The other side was the same crowded.
I asked by husband to get out the video cam and film the chaos and whether/how it's going to sort itself out - or not.
It was just a matter of blowing countless horns and moving at the same time. And the chaos was gone within minutes............no damages, no nothing just running smoothly.

It's a shame - on video is by far less dramatic as it was originally.

But yes - it's hell: rush - break - horn - break - rush - full stop. One gets shaken back and forth (the seat belts were an excellent devise to keep us upright and avoid being shaken back and forth and left and right) and wonders how THEY DO IT.
The same driving skills woukd kill you within 5 minutes on a German autobahn.

But still I think they are the worst. Again sorry kipper for desillusioning you. ;-

And then there are the great Italian drivers....