Road safety (or the lack thereof) in Central Asia
Having just come back from a three-week long trip through Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, I feel somewhat compelled to drop a post on my perception of road safety in the two countries. The statistics are pretty straightforward: Kazakhstan ranks 12th in the worldwide list of “most deaths in road accidents per 100,000 inhabitants”, Kyrgyzstan 15th.
The condition of the roads and the vehicles that drive on them are the main contributers to this grim number work of course. During my limited time spent in the region over the past years, I had four tyres burst beneath me, several near-misses, and saw more road-side wreckage than during the rest of my life. This time was no difference.
I found the scariest part the road between Bishkek and Balykchy ashore the Issyk Kul, which a day after our average 120 km/h Marshrutka drive was the scene of the most tragic accident of this season with at least seven Kazakh tourists reported dead. The recipe seems simple: Too many cars, police too sparse on the ground or too corrupt to enforce speed limits, and of course absolutely reckless driving.
It’s not too much different in Kazakhstan: Here, two bus accidents cost the lives of several people over the past weeks too. However, there are also some positive signals coming from that country: Wearing seatbelts when sitting in the front of the car has become much more common as the police finally began enforcing the law. Speed limits on several roads seem to be obeyed much more than in Kyrgyzstan. If you say that these two behaviour changes only came about because the police got more greedy - fine, let them be greedy.
But what can be done to further reduce road deaths? Several people remarked that it is way too cheap to drive a car in the region these days. More economic development, especially in Kazakhstan has meant that prices for used European cars have come down quite significantly. Insurance and tax are still negligible costs. The increase in petrol prices over the past year or so has not yet translated into less cars on the streets.
The problems of such economic solutions are obvious: hiking up prices will mean that the poorest and more remote living people are hit hardest. Prices for food, already high due to global developments, have further risen in rural regions in Kyrgyzstan due to the higher cost of getting them there.
It seems that two things are crucial for a safer future on Central Asia’s roads: better and less corrupt police and a change in behaviour on the side of the drivers. Hopefully, the first will come once other governance measures gain traction (more pay, more transparency, better monitoring), no need to elaborate the likelihood of that happening here. It’s just not right that a Marshrutka driver who makes two trips between Bishkek and Karakol a day at gruesome speed (!) gives the roadside traffic policemen a big hug and calls them ‘Brothers’.
The change in behaviour is no less tricky. Road safety awareness programs are expensive and reach a limited audience unless aired on National TV (and that they do work is difficult to determine).
Given that so much of Central Asia’s transportation is by taxi, the only thing one can do is tell the driver to chill out and step off the gas and wear a seatbelt if there is one. If the driver looks at you bewildered asking why you don’t trust him or that you don’t need a seatbelt in Kyrgyzstan, tell him that you’re not into cultural relativism.
Photo at the top of the post by shok
on August 4th, 2008 at 8:25 am
Yesterday my driver felt it necessary to down a beer at the beginning of what should have been a 10-12 hour drive. He made it in 7, but I was not exactly thrilled about the time savings…
on August 4th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Hmmm - I hope you wore your seatbelt ;)
I remember a taxi driver telling me that the ride from Osh to Batken not via Uzbekistan was going to take 7 hours. I got there 21 hours later…
on August 16th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
I had a similar experience as James going from Bishkek to Osh with a drinking driver. We were making great time until the guy veered off the road and the car flipped over three times in a corn field. At least it didn’t happen near any cliffs! I would like to know, how difficult is it to get a license (or is there a licensing processing at all)?