Each year, worldwide, 225,000 people are killed on the road, and uncounted millions are injured, leaving tens of thousands crippled or maimed. The emotional and financial costs of these accidents are incalculable. In just one country, Nigeria, “government statistics show that automobile fatalities climbed from 29,000 in 1979 to 32,000 in 1980 and 34,000 in 1981,” says World Health magazine.

The very young are almost always victims of someone else’s negligence. For example, in the United States “automobile accidents kill and injure more children, 0-4 years of age, than did the worst year of the polio epidemic,” reports Human Factors Society Safety Technical Group Newsletter. And World Health notes this about Nigeria’s youth: “Young people of secondary school and college are more liable to die on the road than to be killed by communicable diseases.”