Road rage a menace to precious lives

There are deaths caused by natural disasters or an unavoidable combination of events, and there are deaths that result from negligence, lack of control and direct responsibility of a group of individuals. The second type of deaths can be prevented or, at least mitigated. The deaths caused by traffic accidents in China belong to the second category.

Every year, about 65,000 people die on China's roads, but depending on how statistics are computed, this figure may even be as high as 200,000. Although the number of deaths has declined in the last couple of years, it is still high both in relative and absolute terms.

In absolute terms, road accidents in China claim roughly as many victims each year as the confirmed death toll in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The quake death toll was largely because of natural, almost unavoidable causes. The deaths on the roads, however, are a shame for the country and for those who are responsible for them.