Regional Analyses

4.5 Latin America and the Caribbean

The Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region has a higher share of fatalities (13%) and motor vehicles (14%) than it does of global population (9%). Crash data was available on25 of the 33 countries (95 % population representation).

The summary presented below is based on the Inter American Development Bank funded ‘Review of Traffic Safety Latin America and Caribbean Region’ (IADB, 1998) and has been updated where data has since become available.

4.5.1 Current situation

The ten countries summarised below (See Table 23) are all from the South American sub region and account for over 90 per cent of the region’s fatalities. As in the other regional summaries, official reported fatality data has been used but the problem of under-reporting needs to be highlighted. The IADB review reported Argentina’s true fatality figure to be30 per cent higher than reported while in Brazil, the actual number of fatalities could be 50-80 per cent higher (IADB, 1998). Mexico has been excluded, as its fatality reporting is limited to national highways only. Peru is included but it’s under-reporting is serious with less than two injuries being reported for every road fatality. Venezuela and Nicaragua were reported to have begun collecting casualty data from hospital to supplement police data.

Venezuela has the second worst fatality rate in the LAC region. Fatality risks and rates for all LAC countries with data available are presented in Figures 12 and 13.

Table 23 - Key indicators for the LAC region

4.5.2 Recent trends

The Caribbean region experienced the greatest change in the last decade with motorisation almost doubling and road fatalities growing even faster. In the other two regions, motor vehicles grew twice as fast as fatalities.

The rate of increase in road deaths was twice that of population in Mexico and Central America and South America and over 7 times that of population in the Caribbean. Thus the relative risk of road deaths increased throughout all LAC but dramatically so in the Caribbean.

Motor vehicle ownership is still low for the region overall with half of the countries reporting motorisation levels of under 100, i.e. less than 10 per cent of the population have access to a motor vehicle.

4.5.3 Road crash casualties

4.5.3.1 Road user type

Data from the Latin America/Caribbean study showed wide variation in road user type involvement with little consistency reported within the sub-regions. Despite the region’s low motorisation level, pedestrians and bus passengers only accounted for over half of all fatal road crashes in Honduras and Peru (See Table 24). Mexico’s high rate of car involvement reflects the data being limited to federal highways only but the low rate of pedestrian involvement is still surprising. Car involvement was substantial in several countries. Bus involvement was low overall (though still varying by 9 times) and Ecuador appears to have a problem with commercial vehicles.

Brazil’s fatalities account for 46 per cent of the region’s total which is over 3 times as large as the next country’s, Colombia. Yet in terms of risk to population, Colombia, Uruguay and Argentina are reported losing a higher percentage of their citizens in road crashes.

Brazil has the highest motorisation level of the larger countries and has 8 times more vehicles per capita than does Venezuela. Yet the Bahamas motorisation level (453 mv/1,000 pop) is almost three times that of Brazil’s. As shown in Figure 12, Guyana has the region’s worst fatality rate (238 deaths/10,000 mv), while Colombia’s fatality rate is one of the worst as is its fatality risk level,

Table 24 fatal road crashes by road user/vehicle type

4.5.3.2 Gender and age distribution

As with the other LMC regions, female fatality involvement was low with approximately one of every five fatalities being female. There was little variation between the countries reporting with females accounting for between 19 and 23 per cent of all fatalities (See Table 25).

Figure 12 Latin/Central America and the Caribbean fatality risk (1996)

Figure 13 - Latin/Central America and the Caribbean fatality rates (1996)