Driving Stats

My post about the dangers of driving in Amman was more timely than I knew. A brief in yesterday's Jordan Times says officials met Saturday to discuss the traffic situation in Jordan. It cites Traffic Department figures, saying there are 710,000 cars on the kingdom's roads (one for every seven Jordanians) and more than 83,000 traffic accidents annually. More than 18,000 people are injured in car accidents and 800 are killed. I thought this sounded like a lot, but then I compared the number of fatalities to the number in Indiana, which, according to the CIA Factbook is only slighlty larger than Jordan. The midwestern state had 938 fatalities in 2005, or so says the National Center for Statistics and Analysis. I'm not sure how many cars are on the road in Indiana. I looked but can't find it. It might not be a very good comparison anyway, because it's Indiana, after all.