The front-page news in yesterday’s edition of USA Today was “Traveling abroad’s top risk: Roads” with a subhead that read “One American dies every 36 hours.”
The story is that traffic accidents are the No. 1 killer of healthy Americans traveling abroad…in other words, deaths not attributed to natural causes.
There is a (partial) solution. Travel abroad on a cruise ship. We don’t have the statistics to verify this, but it’s a fairly safe assumption that 1,820 Americans did not die on cruises to foreign countries since January 1, 2003, the date the study began.
Driving abroad can be hazardous, for a number of reasons. One is that in some countries they drive on the “wrong” side of the road. Hello there, England. That means the driver is on the “wrong” side of the car and the gear shift is on the “wrong” side of the driver. Another is it’s easy to get lost and confused, especially if English is not the first language.
And yes, cruise-ship passengers have been known to rent cars (guilty as charged) in foreign countries, so being on a ship doesn’t automatically mean you won’t be susceptible to a car accident, in a vehicle or on foot.
It reminds us of the first and only Dunn family European Vacation. We spent nine days driving around France, where the car, driver and gear shift are all okay. We left Nice (Monaco) bound for Grenoble. In a town called Digne, there was a festival…and a detour…and we made a wrong turn.
Once the map told us where we were, the road led to Lambert. It was two lanes paved at first, and eventually one lane gravel. It went up…and up…and up. It twisted and turned. Finally the driver said: “I can’t go any further.” By then, the road was too narrow for a U-turn.
On the left was a rock face. On the right, down…down…down, and no guard rail.
Turning the wheel, the driver inched the car back and forth, back and forth, until it had finally made a 180 and was pointed down the mountain, back to Digne. It was almost dark, and NOBODY knew where we were. A family of five could have become traveling-abroad statistics that evening, if we’d ever been found.
We never did find Lambert. We did find we liked cruising better.