“Traffic accidents kill 1.25 million people per year, and it’s well-known that those deaths are disproportionately in low- and middle-income countries. Over at CityMetric, writer James O’Malley has added an interesting wrinkle, by showing a correlation between the number of traffic fatalities in a country and the corruptness of its government.”

Source: qz.com

I love the last paragraph in this article because it echoes the “Broken Windows” theory–not at the neighborhood scale, but for the state.  Horrible driving isn’t the worse thing for a country, but it is indicative of the degree of social trust in each other and in the collective system; corruption erodes both. 

 

“Bottom line: If you’re in a country where everyone drives on the sidewalk and nobody stops at stop signs, you can be pretty sure the government isn’t working right.”

 

Tags: political, governance, transportation.