Archives for October 8th, 2007

Somewhere out there is a tractor with my name on it. [source]

Living in Styria is really great, as long as you come to terms with the fact that you’re going to die in a violent car crash one day. This page of the Norwegian Traffic Authority (thx Gandalf!) used to have a list of accidents per capita in the EU, and Slovenia was close to the top. Of course, lately the trend has been getting worse. Despite efforts to crack down hard on speeding and drunk driving, traffic deaths are up this year. This past summer, seven people died in one horrific accident outside Ljubljana.

Just to put that in perspective: that’s more deaths than the recent floods, which prompted a day of mourning here. Seven people dying in Slovenia is like 287 people dying in Germany, or more than a thousand people dying in the United States. In other words, that one accident on the Ljubljana ring took roughly the same number of lives per capita as the Eschede Disaster in Germany or Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

The Ljubljana accident aside (it was, after all, caused by a Romanian driver) it is Styria that houses some of the country’s most maniacal drivers. And that brings us to today’s main link, a video of people navigating the highways of Styria — including such chill-inducing moves as “going down the highway in reverse” and the ever-popular “turning around in a one-way tunnel.”

You can watch this agonizing video (it’s like watching a preview of my own death) here.

(Thanks Miha!)