CLASS
DIFFERENCES AND TRAFFIC DEATHS
David J. Krus and Edward A.
Nelsen
Arizona State University
Summary.- The transition of the East European countries from socialist to capitalist economies is marked by an exponential rise in traffic-related deaths. This increase is routinely ascribed to the rising numbers of privately owned cars. However, this explanation fails to take into account the fact that in the Western societies a positive correlation exists among the number of cars on the road and number of traffic deaths, whereas in the post-communist countries this correlation is negative. This empirical finding is discussed in relation to a hypothesis that marked class differences and related feelings of superiority are a contributing factor in moving vehicle related homicides.
During the decades preceding the fall of the Soviet Union, the gradual increase in private car ownership in socialist countries of the East Europe and in the Soviet Union steadily increased, as did the number of traffic accidents. However the increase in traffic accidents was proportional to the growth of car ownership. For example, in the Czech Republic, during the 1960s, the annual number of traffic accidents increased by 300, during the 1970s by 457, and during the 1980s by 551. After the 'velvet' revolution in the Fall of 1989, the number of traffic accidents skyrocketed, increasing by 3,264 (Schreib, 1995).
Fig. 1. The
number of traffic accidents
in the Czech Republic during the 1950s - 1990's
The routine explanations of the skyrocketing car accidents were the increases in car ownership and increases in the number of drunken drivers on the road. However, between 1990 and 1994 the number of cars on the road increased about 50 percent and the number of drunken drivers involved in traffic accidents grew by seven percent. Neither fact fully accounts for the drastic increase of traffic accidents during this period. Various additional explanations were offered, as, for example, a ‘suspected’ correlation between trauma caused by alleged violations of human rights by the previous socialist government and the number of present traffic accidents. The most bizarre explanation was that, as consequence of creation of the new capitalistic state, the country became overcrowded with cars and drivers started to suffer claustrophobic depressions, similar to depressions experimentally evoked in people forced to live for a long period of time in cellars or caves (Busta, 1993, p.28).
An interesting aspect in the rise of private car ownership in East European Countries is that during the socialist period most drivers drove similar cars, while the privatization of whole industries after the demise of socialism created a class of nouveau riches, owners of West-made cars, vastly superior when compared to the formerly locally produced cars. Casual observation of drivers' behavior on the road suggests that drivers of West-made cars experience a marked feeling of superiority over the owners of old, locally produced cars. The authors considered this hypothesis to be only an unwarranted conjecture until they discovered a surprising relationship between the number of people killed per 100,000 privately owned cars and number of privately owned cars per 1,000 inhabitants of a country. Ordinarily, one would expect a moderate positive correlation between cars on road and number of traffic deaths. For Western European countries as Austria, France, Sweden, or Norway, this is indeed true, the correlation being .23. However, for the post-communist European countries this correlation is negative, equal to -.70. This finding supports the hypothesis that marked class differences and related feelings of superiority are a contributing factor in moving vehicle related homicides.
REFERENCES
Busta, P. (1993) Proc pribiva autohavarii? Mlady Svet, September 23, 25-28.
Schreib, L. (1995) Mrtvi varovnym mementem. Vecernik-Praha, September 3, p. 5.