Israel: driving crazy, fatality rate down

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Date: 2001-06-06

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The experts are puzzled. By all accounts, driving in Israel is getting worse: more honking, rudeness, cutting in. But surprisingly, Israel's traffic fatality rate seems to be going down, and quite dramatically in 1999.

Israel's traffic safety experts don't know what to make of it. By all accounts, driving in Israel is crazy. Drivers honk at one another, cut in to lanes of traffic, go too fast into corners, and seem generally to be pretty wild in comparison to countries like the U.S., Canada, and Britain. But while most people seem to agree that the driving is getting worse, fatality and injury rates are down-dramatically, according to the J erusalem Post .

Deaths fell from 555 in 1998 to 469 in 1999-a decrease of 15.5%. Severe injuries went down from 3,361 to 3,091-an 8% reduction. The total number of injuries went down by just over 10%, and the total number of accidents fell by slightly more than 12%. During the same time, the number of vehicles on the road increased-from 1.7 million in 1998 to 1.73 million last year, and according to the Transport Ministry's estimate, the number of kilometers driven also went up-from about 34.1 billion to approximately 35 billion.

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