Want To Know If A Country Is Corrupt? Figure Out How Good Its Drivers Are

May 6, 2016 in Daily Bulletin

Christopher Groskopf reported on the relationship between governance and traffic fatalities:

  • A statistical analysis found that the more corrupt a country is, the greater the number of road accidents it has.
  • This is driven in part by corrupt governments being more likely to siphon infrastructure funds away for other purposes.
  • Corrupt countries might also have corrupt traffic police that take bribes instead of punishing people for traffic violations.
  • And there is a relationship between income and corruption. Traffic fatalities began to go down once a people’s income increases above $10,000 per capita. It’s usually uncorrupt governments that are able to manage this.

See a visualization of the data and read more about the study here.

Source: Quartz