I heard the car is the deadliest weapon created by humans and that the number of lives it has claimed exceeds the death toll from atomic weapons, guns or bombing. Is this true? And what are the grisly figures involved?
(Continued)
鈥� By not considering the less developed countries, some of your previous correspondents have neglected nearly 90 per cent of deaths caused by road traffic accidents. The World Health Organization estimates the total is 1.2 million deaths per year, the majority of these probably being pedestrians and cyclists.
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It is also necessary to add the deaths from 鈥渢raffic-related air pollution鈥�, as another WHO report terms it. These have been estimated as between 0.8 times (in New Zealand) and three times (in Switzerland) as high as the accident-related death rate, so perhaps it would be correct to double the estimate of deaths due to motor vehicles to 2.4 million.
We should also factor in an estimate for deaths due to climate change caused by vehicle and petroleum industry carbon dioxide emissions. A definite value for this number of deaths will presumably remain unknown until it starts to reach tens of millions per year, because it is difficult to attribute individual droughts, storms or floods to climate change.
Even disregarding climate-change deaths, however, the current annual rate of deaths due to motor vehicles is at least double that caused by war.
鈥淭he current annual death rate due to motor vehicles is at least double those caused by war鈥�
Philip Ward, By email, no address supplied