Basta! En La Ruta

Fatal bus crash in Santa Fe; 10 students die

As we've noted and noted some more, the lack of driving chops shown by professional bus and truck drivers in Argentina is frightening. But even by Argentine standards, what happened last week on Route 11 was beyond the pale. A bus full of high school students from Villa Crespo (Buenos Aires) were returning from the province of Chaco, where they'd help build a school; on the way back at 10 p.m., an out of control truck slammed into the bus, killing 12 (including 10 students). The truck driver and his assistent were apparently very drunk.

I don't want to get on my soapbox and rant about something so simple, but as has been noted, highways here are out of control. The fact that La Nación felt the need to run a map of the country's most dangerous roads says something; so does the fact that I find it hard to sleep--out of fear--on long distance buses. But let's stick to stats: according to Luchemos Por La Vida (We Struggle For Life), an Argentine safe roads group, 7,138 people died in accidents in the country last year, about 20 per day. In 2001 (the most recent data they had), that was 1,058 deaths per million vehicles, which compares really, um, badly to the U.S. or Spain. They have rates of 196 and 211. It's an obvious thing to say, but something has to be done: at 7,000+ deaths per year, it would take 4 years and 3 months for 30,000 people to die. It took the last dictatorship some seven years to kill that many people.