How many people have been killed and injured in car crashes since the first death, of Bridget Driscoll, on 17 August 1896?

1 March 2005

This number cannot be precise since records were not kept from the start and because records are also inadequate.

In his book Autogeddon, published in 1991, Heathcote Williams speaks of...

"17 million dead and counting...more than twice the number in the death camps, eighteen times the count in Korea, seventeen Vietnams, a hundred and thirty times the kill in Hiroshima, eight thousand five hundred Ulsters, the hundred years wars in a week, The Crusade in under thirty seconds, a humdrum holocaust: the third was nobody bothered to declare..."!!!

Each year, over 1 million people are killed on the world's roads, therefore the approximate number of people killed must now be over 30 million. The World Health Organisation quotes 1.26 million killed each year, with this number rising steeply as deaths go up in developing countries. China is now mass producing cars, so people in China are likely to die on the roads in huge numbers in years to come, and in many other countries that will be able to buy cars more cheaply from China.

It is assumed that for each person killed, 4 people are permanently disabled, 30 treated in hospital emergency rooms (therefore seriously injured) and 10 hospitalised; many others are injured.

The WHO World Report on road injury prevention, launched last year, mentions that apart from the 1.26 million killed, 50-100 million people are injured each year, which represents the ninth place of the World's disease burden, forecast to become 3rd by 2020 if present trends continue.