(英会話リスニングスクリプト)
Since then, motor vehicles have taken 30
million lives in accidents alone.
By 1990, traffic accidents had become the
ninth greatest cause of death worldwide, killing 500,000
people a year and injuring 15 million, mostly in developing
countries such as India.
Road accidents in the developed world have
been declining for 30 years.
Between 1965 and 1994, the number of vehicles
on Britain's roads doubled, but accidents halved.
This is the result of stricter drinking
and driving laws, education and better road design which
caters to children and cyclists as well as cars.
Australia and Japan are the safest places
in the world, having the lowest road accident rates, while
the most dangerous places are India and some African and
Latin American countries.
There seem to be different reasons for these
high road accident rates.
In India, for example, one of the main reasons
seems to be that the streets are much too crowded and vehicle
owners have to drive aggressively to get anywhere.
However, in countries such as Colombia many
of the victims were killed or injured in accidents involving
drunk drivers.
It seems that there are many different reasons
for the number of car accidents in the developing countries,
but the first thing that the governments need to acknowledge
is that there is a problem and that the problem is getting
worse very quickly.
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