B1 · Intermediate
13 min
road safetypublic healthdevelopmentindia
The Roads That Kill: India and the Global Road Safety Crisis
Las carreteras que matan: India y la crisis global de la seguridad vial
A road collision in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh killed twelve people and left thirty-five injured. Fletcher and Octavio use this moment to explore why India's roads are so deadly and what it reveals about public health in the developing world.
Un accidente de tráfico en el estado indio de Madhya Pradesh mató a doce personas y dejó a treinta y cinco heridas. Fletcher y Octavio usan este momento para explorar por qué las carreteras de India son tan mortales y qué dice esto sobre la salud pública en el mundo en desarrollo.
8 essential B1-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| carretera | road / highway | Las carreteras de Madhya Pradesh son muy peligrosas por la noche. |
| accidente de tráfico | traffic accident / road accident | Cada año, los accidentes de tráfico matan a miles de personas en India. |
| herido | injured / wounded | Treinta y cinco personas resultaron heridas en el accidente. |
| seguridad vial | road safety | La seguridad vial es un problema de salud pública muy importante. |
| carnet de conducir | driving license | En España, puedes perder puntos de tu carnet de conducir si conduces demasiado rápido. |
| infraestructura | infrastructure | La infraestructura de las carreteras rurales es muy mala en muchos países. |
| cinturón de seguridad | seat belt | Muchas personas en India no usan el cinturón de seguridad. |
| sanción | penalty / fine | El gobierno aumentó las sanciones para los conductores que no respetan las leyes de tráfico. |
Twelve people dead.
Thirty-five injured.
A pickup truck and an SUV on a road in central India.
And that news item got maybe four sentences in most international outlets before everyone moved on.
Sí, y eso es un problema.
Yes, and that is a problem.
Porque en India, este tipo de accidente pasa todos los días.
Because in India, this type of accident happens every day.
Más de cuatrocientas personas mueren en las carreteras de India cada día.
More than four hundred people die on India's roads every day.
Cada.
Every.
Día.
Single.
Four hundred a day.
That's roughly a hundred and fifty thousand deaths a year.
To put that in perspective, that's more than the entire population of a mid-sized American city, gone every twelve months, just on roads.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y la Organización Mundial de la Salud dice que los accidentes de tráfico son la octava causa de muerte en el mundo.
And the World Health Organization says road accidents are the eighth leading cause of death in the world.
Para los jóvenes entre cinco y veintinueve años, es la primera causa de muerte.
For young people between five and twenty-nine years old, it is the number one cause of death.
No una enfermedad, no el cáncer, los accidentes de coche.
Not a disease, not cancer, car accidents.
Let's start with what actually happened in Madhya Pradesh.
A pickup truck hit an SUV in Dhar district.
Twelve dead, ten of the thirty-five injured in critical condition.
Police are investigating.
What do we know about roads in that part of India?
Madhya Pradesh es uno de los estados más peligrosos de India para conducir.
Madhya Pradesh is one of the most dangerous states in India for driving.
Las carreteras son malas, hay muchos camiones pesados, y los controles de velocidad son muy débiles.
The roads are poor, there are many heavy trucks, and speed controls are very weak.
Además, muchas personas no usan el cinturón de seguridad.
Also, many people do not use seat belts.
And these aren't highway accidents in the American sense, are they?
We're not talking about interstates.
What does a typical road in rural Madhya Pradesh actually look like?
Mira, imagina una carretera con dos carriles muy estrechos.
Look, imagine a road with two very narrow lanes.
Hay camiones enormes, motos, bicicletas, animales, personas que caminan, todo junto.
There are enormous trucks, motorbikes, bicycles, animals, people walking, all together.
No hay separación.
No separation.
Y a veces hay mucha velocidad y muy poca luz por la noche.
And sometimes there is a lot of speed and very little light at night.
I spent time in India back in the nineties covering the economic reforms, and I remember the roads.
It felt genuinely like a negotiation every time you drove anywhere.
Every trip was a live test of everyone's risk tolerance simultaneously.
Jaja, sí, eso es una descripción muy buena.
Ha, yes, that is a very good description.
En India hay una palabra para ese estilo de conducir: 'jugaad.' Significa una solución informal, creativa, pero también un poco peligrosa.
In India there is a word for that driving style: 'jugaad.' It means an informal, creative solution, but also a little dangerous.
Aplican esa filosofía a todo, incluso a cómo conducen.
They apply that philosophy to everything, including how they drive.
Jugaad.
I love that.
Okay, so the accident in Dhar is one data point in a truly enormous problem.
Let's go back a step.
Why did India's roads become this deadly?
This isn't random.
There's a history here.
Es una historia de crecimiento muy rápido.
It is a story of very rapid growth.
En los años noventa, la economía de India creció mucho.
In the nineties, India's economy grew a lot.
Más personas compraron coches y motos.
More people bought cars and motorbikes.
Pero las carreteras no cambiaron tan rápido.
But the roads did not change as fast.
La infraestructura fue muy lenta.
The infrastructure was very slow.
That gap between economic development and infrastructure.
You see it everywhere in the developing world.
The vehicles arrive before the roads are ready for them.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y también hay otro problema: la regulación.
And there is also another problem: regulation.
En muchos estados de India, las licencias de conducir son muy fáciles de conseguir.
In many states of India, driving licenses are very easy to get.
A veces no hay un examen real.
Sometimes there is no real test.
Pagas el dinero y recibes la licencia.
You pay the money and you receive the license.
Corruption in licensing.
Which means you have millions of drivers on the road who have never actually demonstrated they can drive safely.
That's not a traffic problem, that's a public health emergency.
Sí.
Yes.
Y mira las víctimas.
And look at the victims.
La mayoría de las personas que mueren en las carreteras de India son pobres.
Most of the people who die on India's roads are poor.
Son personas que van en moto, en autobús, que caminan.
They are people travelling by motorbike, by bus, people walking.
No son personas ricas en coches grandes y seguros.
They are not wealthy people in large, safe cars.
Which means road safety is also an inequality story.
The people dying at the highest rates are the ones who can't afford the safest vehicles, who live in areas with the worst infrastructure, and who have the least political power to demand better.
Así es.
That's right.
En España también tuvimos este problema.
In Spain we had this problem too.
En los años ochenta y noventa, muchas personas morían en las carreteras españolas.
In the eighties and nineties, many people died on Spanish roads.
Era una crisis nacional.
It was a national crisis.
Pero después cambiamos muchas cosas.
But then we changed many things.
Wait, Spain was genuinely bad?
I didn't know that.
I think of Spanish roads now as completely fine, good highways, modern infrastructure.
En 1989, murieron más de nueve mil personas en las carreteras de España.
In 1989, more than nine thousand people died on Spain's roads.
Nueve mil.
Nine thousand.
Ahora son menos de mil quinientas al año.
Now it is fewer than fifteen hundred per year.
Es una transformación enorme.
It is an enormous transformation.
No fue fácil ni rápida, pero funcionó.
It was not easy or quick, but it worked.
Nine thousand.
From nine thousand to fifteen hundred.
That's an eighty percent reduction.
What actually changed?
Because that kind of improvement doesn't happen by accident.
Varias cosas.
Several things.
Primero, construimos mejores autopistas con separación entre los dos sentidos.
First, we built better highways with separation between the two directions.
Segundo, el carnet por puntos, que es un sistema donde pierdes puntos si cometes infracciones.
Second, the points-based license system, where you lose points if you commit violations.
Tercero, más control del alcohol.
Third, more alcohol enforcement.
Y la educación en las escuelas.
And education in schools.
The points-based license system.
That's something India introduced in 2019 actually, with a major revision to the Motor Vehicles Act.
They got serious about penalties.
Fines went up enormously.
Did it work?
Un poco.
A little.
Las estadísticas mejoraron un poco después de 2019.
The statistics improved a little after 2019.
Pero el problema es que muchos estados de India no aplicaron las nuevas reglas de la misma manera.
But the problem is that many states in India did not apply the new rules in the same way.
India es muy grande y muy diversa.
India is very large and very diverse.
La ley federal no siempre llega a todos los rincones.
The federal law does not always reach every corner.
Federal law versus state implementation.
That's a problem I recognize.
The United States has spent decades trying to get uniform seat belt laws across fifty states.
India has twenty-eight states and a similar tension between central authority and local reality.
Hay otro factor importante: los camiones.
There is another important factor: trucks.
En India, los camiones de carga son responsables de una parte enorme de los accidentes mortales.
In India, freight trucks are responsible for an enormous share of fatal accidents.
Y los camioneros a veces trabajan muchas horas sin dormir.
And truck drivers sometimes work many hours without sleeping.
Es muy peligroso.
It is very dangerous.
Fatigue.
Which is a physiological issue, not a traffic engineering issue.
You can build a perfect road, put up perfect signs, and a driver who hasn't slept in twenty hours will still kill people on it.
That's where road safety becomes a labor rights conversation.
Completamente.
Completely.
Y también hay un problema con los vehículos.
And there is also a problem with the vehicles.
Muchos coches y motos viejos en India no tienen los sistemas de seguridad modernos, como airbags o frenos ABS.
Many old cars and motorbikes in India do not have modern safety systems, like airbags or ABS brakes.
Son vehículos baratos de países que no exigen los mismos estándares.
They are cheap vehicles from countries that do not require the same standards.
The vehicle safety standards gap.
And this is global.
Car manufacturers sell different versions of the same car in different markets.
A car sold in Europe has to pass crashworthiness tests that the same model sold in parts of Africa or South Asia simply doesn't have to pass.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Hay una organización que se llama Global NCAP que publica pruebas de choque para coches vendidos en mercados en desarrollo.
There is an organization called Global NCAP that publishes crash tests for cars sold in developing markets.
Algunos coches muy populares en India recibieron cero estrellas.
Some very popular cars in India received zero stars.
Cero.
Zero.
El mismo coche, pero más barato y más peligroso.
The same car, but cheaper and more dangerous.
Zero stars.
And the company selling it knows.
That's a choice.
Which circles back to your inequality point, Octavio.
The wealthy buyer in Mumbai or Delhi gets the European-spec car with five stars.
The family in Madhya Pradesh gets the budget version.
Y la Organización Mundial de la Salud tiene un plan, el 'Decenio de Acción para la Seguridad Vial', para reducir las muertes en carretera en el mundo a la mitad antes de 2030.
And the World Health Organization has a plan, the 'Decade of Action for Road Safety,' to cut road deaths in the world in half before 2030.
Pero ahora mismo, no vamos bien.
But right now, we are not on track.
Los números no mejoran lo suficiente.
The numbers are not improving fast enough.
Not on track.
Tell me about Sweden, because whenever road safety comes up in public health circles, Sweden comes up.
They have this Vision Zero framework.
What is it and why does it work?
Vision Zero es una filosofía que dice: ninguna muerte en carretera es aceptable.
Vision Zero is a philosophy that says: no road death is acceptable.
No es una meta imposible, es una filosofía de diseño.
It is not an impossible goal, it is a design philosophy.
Diseñas la carretera, el coche y las leyes para que los errores humanos no maten a nadie.
You design the road, the car, and the laws so that human errors do not kill anyone.
El humano comete errores, pero el sistema no puede matar.
The human makes errors, but the system cannot kill.
The system absorbs the error rather than punishing the person for making it.
That's a completely different way of thinking.
Sweden's fatality rate per capita is now one of the lowest in the world.
And this framework is now being adopted, at least in theory, by cities like Oslo, New York, Helsinki.
Pero cuesta dinero.
But it costs money.
Mucho dinero.
A lot of money.
Y en un país como India, donde todavía hay cientos de millones de personas sin acceso a agua potable o a buenos hospitales, es difícil decir que las carreteras son la prioridad número uno.
And in a country like India, where there are still hundreds of millions of people without access to clean water or good hospitals, it is hard to say that roads are priority number one.
That's a genuinely hard tension.
And yet the economic cost of those hundred and fifty thousand deaths per year, the lost productivity, the healthcare burden, the bereaved families who can no longer support themselves, the WHO estimates road crashes cost low- and middle-income countries about three percent of their GDP.
At some point, you can't afford not to fix the roads.
Tres por ciento del PIB.
Three percent of GDP.
Eso es enorme.
That is enormous.
Para un país como India, son decenas de miles de millones de dólares cada año.
For a country like India, that is tens of billions of dollars every year.
Es más que muchos presupuestos nacionales de salud.
It is more than many national health budgets.
El problema es que este dinero se pierde poco a poco, en miles de accidentes, y nadie ve la cifra total.
The problem is that this money is lost little by little, in thousands of accidents, and nobody sees the total figure.
The invisible epidemic.
That phrase gets used about a lot of things but it really fits here.
A disease killing a hundred and fifty thousand people a year in one country alone would be front-page news.
Twelve people dead on a road in Madhya Pradesh gets four sentences internationally.
Sí.
Yes.
Y mira, quiero decir algo sobre los jóvenes.
And look, I want to say something about young people.
En India, muchos de los muertos en las carreteras son hombres jóvenes entre dieciocho y treinta años.
In India, many of those killed on roads are young men between eighteen and thirty years old.
Son personas que acaban de empezar su vida adulta.
They are people who have just started their adult lives.
Es una pérdida enorme para las familias y para la sociedad.
It is an enormous loss for families and for society.
And overwhelmingly male.
The gender imbalance in road fatalities is striking globally.
Men take more risks behind the wheel, statistically.
Which is itself a public health observation with real behavioral roots.
Cierto.
True.
Bueno, creo que lo que este accidente en Dhar nos recuerda es que hay crisis de salud silenciosas.
Well, I think what this accident in Dhar reminds us is that there are silent health crises.
No tienen el drama de una epidemia o un terremoto, pero matan a millones de personas cada año.
They do not have the drama of an epidemic or an earthquake, but they kill millions of people every year.
Y podemos hacer mucho para cambiarlas.
And we can do a great deal to change them.
Okay, before we go, you used a phrase earlier that caught my ear.
When you were talking about the Spanish road transformation, you said 'carnet por puntos.' I know 'carnet' is a license or a card, but there's something interesting happening with that word, isn't there?
Jaja, sí, buen ojo.
Ha, yes, good eye.
'Carnet' viene del francés, del mismo origen que 'cuaderno': una pequeña colección de notas.
'Carnet' comes from French, from the same origin as 'cuaderno,' a small collection of notes.
En España usamos 'carnet' para muchas cosas: el carnet de conducir, el carnet de identidad, incluso el carnet de socio de un club de fútbol.
In Spain we use 'carnet' for many things: the driving license, the national ID card, even the membership card of a football club.
So 'carnet' and 'cuaderno' come from the same root.
A notebook and an ID card.
The idea of a small document you carry around.
That's the kind of etymology that actually helps you remember a word.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y nota que en México y otros países de América Latina, dicen 'licencia de manejar' o simplemente 'licencia' en lugar de 'carnet de conducir.' El español tiene muchas versiones para la misma cosa.
And note that in Mexico and other Latin American countries, they say 'licencia de manejar' or simply 'licencia' instead of 'carnet de conducir.' Spanish has many versions for the same thing.
Pero 'carnet' es muy español.
But 'carnet' is very Spanish.
So if I ever get pulled over on a road in Madhya Pradesh, I should ask for your 'licencia' rather than your 'carnet.' Assuming I can find a road in reasonable condition to drive on in the first place.
Sí.
Yes.
Y si tienes un accidente, espero que el hospital esté cerca.
And if you have an accident, I hope the hospital is close.
Porque también hay un problema con los hospitales en las carreteras rurales de India, pero eso es una conversación para otro día.
Because there is also a problem with hospitals on rural roads in India, but that is a conversation for another day.