At least it ain’t Mexico

Artist's rendition of American preparing to board a bus in India

If you think idiots on cell phones texting their BFF while smoking a Salem and careening down Park Street while driving the curves with their knees is wearing, trying driving in Mexico.

According to USA Today, an American is getting smacked, smashed and squashed every 36 hours in some foreign country on its roads.

Mexican roads were the leading killer of Americans in 2006 with 682 while Mauritania and Mauritius had a big zero.

Of couse, Mexico had more than 20,000 road kills in 2006.

In China, 31 Americans were killed in traffic crashes in 2006, unless you subtract the American whom Chinese officials swear died in a traffic accident despite an autopsy reporting showing the American was, in fact, murdered.

In 2007, nearly 221,000 people were killed in China and about 196,000 in India, according to official estimates.

According to the Make Roads Safe Campaign, someone is getting crunched out of existence every six seconds on the world's roads.

Naturally, the United Nations moved with its usual speed and temerity by taking swift action to remedy the situation, proclaiming 2011 to 2020 the "Decade of Action for Road Safety." That should take care of the problem.

The plan encourages countries to improve traffic safety of roads and change behavior of drivers by coming down on them in the traditional American method, with the heavy, laced-to-the knee jackboot of authoritarianism: Traffic enforcement.

Americans have their own road hazards

Maybe that's why the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration is giving out dollars so local cops in the U.S. can target and harass motorcyclists at bike-only checkpoints. After all,  having license, registration, proof of insurance and OEM pipes are proven lifesavers!

They're also proven revenue makers for enforcing jurisdictions, but that certainly is not the goal. It's safety!

The UN, and the World Health Organization, also known as WHO, or Dr. WHO, note that many countries have roads that were designed poorly and lack safety features such as barriers. The roads are so bad that they've become a series produced for the History Channel, a channel that seems to increasingly care less about history.

Roads in poorer countries have a mix of vehicles, bicyclists, motorcyclists, animal drawn carts and walking speed bumps also known as pedestrians.

Countries also don't enforce speeding, drunk driving and other laws, including seat belts, motorcycle helmets, and restraints, Dr. WHO opines.

The situation got so bad that  the Pope announced a Vatican statement on the condition of roads across the world.

Kind of makes commuting on U.S. 29 a non-issue, doesn't it?