Killing each other on Argentina's roads and highways

last year i got to know an individual, an attorney, who, pro bono, heads a non-profit devoted to promoting automobile safety in argentina, and who considers the two words - "automobile" and "safety" - to be one of argentina's biggest oxymorons...

[I]f we look at the annual toll, the appalling truth is that in all too many years during the two decades since the National Commission of the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) issued its report on the “dirty war” missing, more people have died on the roads than the nearly 9,000 names in that first CONADEP list...

[...]

Road accidents may not capture the same dramatic headlines as the terrorism causing war after war in this young century but it causes more deaths than the terrorism or even those wars so that rather than fret about crime or terrorism, it is high time we started thinking soberly about where the main threat to our lives lies.

i'll be embarking on a several-thousand kilometer trip next saturday from buenos aires to the andes near the chilean border, a repeat of one i took last year at this time... particularly on the two-lane highways in provincia de la buenos aires as you get closer to the metro area, the driving becomes increasingly insane... i've driven with nutty drivers in mexico, vietnam, costa rica, macedonia, greece, and italy, and lived to tell the tale... i managed to pull off last summer's 4000km trip here in one piece... think good thoughts from this coming saturday through the following week...

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