Bloomberg: More people means more cars, and more deaths
Nathaniel Bullard, columnist and BloombergNEF energy analyst

“…A world with more people and more cars means more death on the world’s roads. … Road-traffic deaths have continued to increase as the human population increases. As Michael R. Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, notes in his foreword to the WHO’s [Global Status Report on Road Safety 2018], ‘Road safety is an issue that does not receive anywhere near the attention it deserves — and it really is one of the great opportunities to save lives around the world.’ The Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety has dedicated more than a quarter-billion dollars over the past 12 years to that opportunity. And there are glimmers of positive development in the WHO report: Road-traffic deaths per 100,000 people have fallen slightly this century, and vehicles have become much safer. Turning the growing number of total deaths into a decline, however, will require much greater safety — for vehicles, for drivers, and for pedestrians — in a future with more cars and more people” (12/14).