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🇪🇨 Ecuador /Crime & Justice

Quito Records Highest Rate of Traffic Fatalities in South America

From El Comercio · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

News Named sources Context piece
  • Quito records nearly 300 traffic-related deaths annually at the scene, not including hospital fatalities, indicating a significant undercount.
  • Experts suggest the actual number of deaths could be 1.5 to 2 times higher, potentially reaching 500 annually, due to a lack of comprehensive post-crash data collection.
  • Ecuador ranks third in Latin America for traffic deaths per capita and first within South America, with Quito and Guayaquil mirroring this high rate.

Quito registers approximately 300 traffic-related deaths each year at the scene of accidents, a figure that excludes fatalities occurring later in hospitals. Diego Vargas, a regional advisor for Vital Strategies, highlighted that this number represents an undercount, as Ecuador lacks a system to track subsequent deaths, a common issue in many South American cities.

Experts estimate that the true death toll in Quito could be 1.5 to 2 times higher than reported, potentially reaching around 500 fatalities annually. This significant underreporting stems from police and traffic agents only collecting data at the immediate crash site. Cities like Buenos Aires and Bogotá have implemented methodologies to better track post-crash deaths, offering a model for Quito to improve its data collection.

Quito and Ecuador - in general - do not have a system that registers these subsequent deaths, unlike other cities in the region. For that reason, this gap in information hides the real magnitude of the problem.

— Diego VargasRegional advisor for Vital Strategies, explaining the undercounting of traffic fatalities in Quito and Ecuador.

Nationally, Ecuador's transit agency records between 2,300 and 2,400 deaths per year. However, Vargas suggests this figure could rise to as high as 4,000, based on a 2023 World Health Organization report using 2021 data. The profile of victims remains consistent with the region, with motorcyclists and pedestrians accounting for a large portion of these fatalities.

Ecuador faces a high rate of traffic fatalities, ranking third in Latin America and first in South America for deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the WHO. Quito and Guayaquil reflect this national trend, with their rates significantly higher than those in Bogotá or São Paulo, and four times that of Buenos Aires, which demonstrates better performance with an average of 4 to 5 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.

According to data from other Latin American cities with measurement systems, the real number of deaths in Quito could multiply by 1.5 to 2 times. That is, about 500 deaths per year and not 300.

— Diego VargasRegional advisor for Vital Strategies, estimating the actual number of traffic fatalities in Quito.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by El Comercio in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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