From the series The world car battle
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society [Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party].
The cost of car accidents
According to the World Health Organization report of December 13th, 2023, over 1.2 million people die in road accidents worldwide every year, with car crash casualties outnumbering those of armed conflicts. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data report, published by The Washington Post on December 12th, 2024, estimates that at least 233,000 people were killed in wars in 2024.
On roads worldwide a massacre is underway—the cost of which, according to the report by the Safety Insights Explorer of the International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP), is $3.6 trillion per year, equivalent to over 3% of global GDP. According to The Economist of September 29th, 2017, in some developing countries the roads are so dangerous that the likelihood of dying from a motor vehicle impact is higher than from the most common natural causes.
Road accidents are the leading cause of death worldwide for children and young adults aged 5 to 29. 92% of fatal road accidents occur in low- and middle-income countries, even though only about 60% of the world’s vehicles are in these regions. The UN General Assembly has set the ambitious goal of halving the number of deaths and injuries caused by road accidents globally by 2030.
| 1913 | 1968 | 2023 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| deaths | 4,700 | 54,862 | 44,762 |
| deaths per 100,000 inhabitants | 4.4 | 27.5 | 13.4 |
| million cars | 1.2 | 100 | 284 |
| deaths per million cars | 3,917 | 548 | 158 |
| Sources: National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). | |||
We quote an authoritative source, the NCAP (New Car Assessment Programme), a global system of independent safety programmes that conduct crash tests on new vehicles to provide a public safety rating, with a 0-to-5-star indicator. The European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) is responsible for defining the methods for assessing the passive safety of cars. It was founded in 1996 and is supported by the European Union. There are cars, virtually identical to European or US models (with five-star safety performance in Europe), that nonetheless would become zero-star killers
in South America [The Telegraph, August 14th, 2023].
A Global-NCAP publication of June 5th, 2017, states that, according to the World Health Organization, 90% of fatal accidents occur in low and middle-income countries. Many of these lives could be saved. By 2030, for example, 40,000 road accident deaths could be avoided, and 400,000 serious injuries could be prevented in just four Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico) if they adopted minimum vehicle-safety standards.
For car manufacturers, the difference between building a car with higher or lower safety levels can be as small as a couple of hundred dollars per vehicle. For passengers, it can mean the difference between life and death. But competition among global automotive groups is fierce: in low- or middle-income countries even a few hundred dollars matter.
The International Organisation of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (OICA) states that vehicle design is only one of many elements that contribute to making roads safer in developing countries. For example, the authorities in these countries are responsible not only for imposing minimum safety requirements, but also for enforcing them. This is a valid observation, but it does not absolve manufacturers of their responsibility. On paper, the experience of already-motorised countries could be transferred to low- and middle-income countries. In practice, competition among manufacturers prevents this because it would reduce their profit margins.
The reality is the stark global inequality in vehicle safety. Whether the responsibility lies with car manufacturers or governments, the fact remains that motorisation worldwide comes at a high cost, just as it did in industrialised countries. This is the dialectic of capitalism laid bare — the contradiction between the development of science and technology, and the competition among car manufacturers for profit.