Deaths and injuries from motor-vehicle accidents are reaching epidemic proportions in developing countries around the world according to the World Health Organization. Statistics from three Latin-American countries, Chile, Costa Rica and Venezuela, 51 that, as in the US, traffic accidents have become the leading cause of 52 among young adults.
About 250 000 people throughout the world are killed in traffic accidents each year, and more than seven million are injured. In all countries the death rate from traffic accidents is higher for 53 than it is for females.
The majority of developing countries 54 a higher incidence of traffic accidents involving pedestrians than of accidents involving motor vehicles alone. Among the causes, the WHO reports, are 55 roads, pedestrian ignorance of road signs, lack of instruction in the use of roads and heavy pedestrian and bicycle traffic on the roads.
To 56 the growing epidemic of traffic accidents, the WHO has 57 a worldwide epidemiological study of road traffic accidents and is encouraging the development of preventive programs. "If traffic accidents are 58 by methods similar to those used against the great killing diseases", the organization states, "the present epidemic of road deaths could be made to disappear 59 as plague and smallpox have now been 60 almost everywhere in the world."