Violence prevention: driving a car is potentially violent

A World Health Organization (WHO) study reveals that nearly half of the deaths of road accidents are people not in a car: pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists, reports an alert issued today by the WHO's Violence and Injury Prevention department. The first global assessment of road safety reveals that about 1.27 Million people die in road accidents each year.

Interestingly, the WHO violence and injury prevention are part of the same effort and are considered public health issues. In some way, casualties in traffic accidents also are victims of a kind of violence and the recent study documents that the more vulnerable ones that are the more likely victims.

Both kinds of violence, the one caused by road traffic and the one caused by relational incidents, are preventable, the WHO motto says. I would add that prevention is not rocket science, but it requires honesty and willingness to change. Appeals and statements won't prevent effectively.

For me, not carrying a gun ever and refusing to engage in physical or verbal violence are principles. It gets more complicated when it comes to structural violence or to driving a car: I try to be nonviolent, but do I underestimate my indirect participation in indirect violence and exposure to potential violence? Perhaps I can begin by acknowledging that driving a car per se is not fully compatible with living gently.