FriendlyExpat

I am continually amazed by the bad driving in Saudi. To reassure myself, and being a bit of a stats nerd, I calculated how dangerous (or safe) it actually is on the roads here, and thought others might be interested to see the figures. So here goes:

Your chance of dying or being seriously injured in a traffic accident for each year in Saudi = 0.16% or 1 in 600. This figure can be stated with a high degree of confidence.

Using the relative risk rates of driving small/big cars I estimate that in cars you have about a 1 in 400 chance per year and in large SUVs you have a 1 in 900 chance per year of suffering a serious traffic injury or worse. These figures have a huge margin of error due to the number of unknown variables and assumptions.

In conclusion - on an individual level you should feel fairly safe whatever car you drive (unless you're here for the long haul...as a 1 in 600 per year chance equates to about 1 in 16 chance over four decades), but at a population level this is a significant issue.

Footnotes - if you want to check my calculations, I used the following sources:
Population of Saudi = 28 million (source: google)
Road deaths + serious traffic injuries each year in Saudi = 45,100 (source: http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index...20130312156489)
Relative safety of cars vs SUVs derived from the figures here (and these figures apply to US drivers so will not be exactly correct for KSA...but they give a ballpark indication: http://www.iihs.org/externaldata/srdata/docs/sr4605.pdf

OleJanx

Saudi's would be dangerous driving in a nail with a club Hammer. They are lethal given access to the automobile, and extremely stupid and arrogant with it, too. The ideal vehicle for facing the ignorant and arrogant Saudi sexist twunts is a Daimler Ferret...

Kix

So a 1/600 chance - does that mean that if you drive 599 miles/kilometers etc. you are likely to crash on the 600th?

Bahtatboy

Your strap line includes "education". Tell me you don't teach

Kix

Of course I do, I'm a Principle (sic) for GEMS...

Tockalosh

Whilst at my previous but one employer in Bahrain we looked at this as everyone including myself was convinced it was far more dangerous to drive in Saudi than the UK

As we had significant operations in Europe, the ME, Asia and Australia we looked at the traffic incident reports from all 3 over the last 3 years and calculated incident and frequency rates

Surprisingly you were more likely to have an RTA in the UK or Australia

You weren't more likely to have a serious RTA in Saudi that resulted in death/disability either

No one was more surprised than my dear self given the daily carnage on the Damman Jubail section of road but no matter how hard we manipulated the figures there was no evidence on any front.

FriendlyExpat

The relevant Wikipedia page strongly disagrees with you on this point (not sure how reliable it is, of course): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ted_death_rate

mikewot

No longer RTAs, now Road Traffic Collision (RTC) because they're not usually accidents but crap driving.

Tockalosh

Ja look I was surprised as anyone but we were looking at our company statistics and not that of the general public. It didn't stop us going down the route of compulsory defensive driver training to try and avoid the **** wits but it did put things in perspective

If you work for a MCN ask your fleet guy or safety guy to try the same exercise.

Beakersful

That's the thing right there. Learn to drive progressively in the understanding that there is crap driving and you lower your chance of an accident.

A basic figure is no good for these sorts of things. What's the rate for expats? Don't include the 18 year olds who think a minimum stopping distance is 3m.

sicklyman

on top of that you learn when to drive and when not to. anytime between 5-sunset in Ramadan is to be avoided for example.

I've never used my mirrors so much here. I'm going to need to replace them soon. I'm wearing them out!

Tockalosh

I witnessed 2 distinct driving styles in the expats

Drive as mad as the locals because you have to

And drive slower than the locals and they will scoot around you.

I generally chose the latter and it worked a treat and was stressfree

Except for when I took my Rangey across the causeway for a blast and when I took the company supercharged Rangey sport for an all out blitz on the Kuwait road. How long does a Rangey sport fuel tank last from full to empty when at full pelt ? 55 minutes lol

weasel decentral

While I agree with the comments about the shit driving, the stats don't make much sense to me.

Is it as simple as 28,000,000 divided by 45,000 equals 1 in 600? Bearing in mind of course that half the population are not allowed to drive, and another percentage are too young. How about using cars per 1,000 of population? So in Saudi we have 336 per thousand. 9.5 million cars give or take.

9,500,000 making 2 trips per day (just a guess) every day for a year (7 billion trips) divided by the accidents equals one accident per 155,555 trips.

So if you drive back and forth to work once a day it will take 213 years to have a (life threatening) accident.

FriendlyExpat

Your alternative figure is in the same ballpark as mine - by your calculations, a shade under 0.5% (or slightly less than 1 in 200) of people driving to work and back once a day will be killed or seriously injured each year. The other 99.5% will be fine.

That might not seem too bad, BUT it would mean that if you're here for a decade driving to work and back once a day, you have a roughly 5% chance of being seriously injured or killed in a road traffic accident during that time....quite a scary figure!

weasel decentral

Its scary if you are determined to frame it that way, you could also look at the other figure and say that if you drive in Saudi for two centuries it is inevitable you will die in a road accident.

Its obviously a lot more dangerous than other countries but a 1 in 155,000 chance every time I drive is reasonably negligible.