Live fast, die young – do Arabs do it better?

The United Arab Emirates is the riskiest place in the world for getting killed in a road accident but only when compared with the statistical probability of dying from cancer, heart attack and stroke. New comparisons of leading causes of death by scientists at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI), show that the number of people dying in a car crash in the UAE is almost one in six of all fatalities related to four causes of death, namely – in scientific lingo – malignant neoplasm, ischaemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease and road crashes. Using five-year-old data from the World Health Organization, the UMTRI scientists compared the number of road accident fatalities to the three other leading causes of death around the world on a country level. They arrived at percentages that showed the Middle East looks prima facie like a barrel of untenable risks – to the