Each year that we have traveled to Mexico and back, we have noticed traffic accidents. Now the first thing the reader will think is that we are talking about in Mexico. But that is not the case. On every trip to Mexico and back we have seen more accidents in the USA than we have in Mexico. In most cases we never saw any accidents in Mexico while we saw a number in the USA. The interesting part of this is the fact that we usually only spend about 3 or 4 days each way traveling through the USA but have spent as much as 3 months in Mexico.

In Mexico we do travel around a lot, it is not as if we are sitting still in one place and never see traffic.

On this last trip, we were only in Mexico for 5 weeks total. But we never saw any accidents at all. But on the trip down, and the trip back we probably saw at least a dozen. About 7 or 8 of these the vehicles being recovered looked so bad that we wondered if the people survived.

Now the reason that I am saying all this is that I have hear the objection a number of times that people are afraid of driving in Mexico due to the way Mexicans drive. But by my personal observations, an RV’er will be safer on a Mexican road than on a US road.

Now I am not saying that the Mexicans are not a bit crazy in their driving habits. The thing seems to be that they are so good at being crazy drivers that they seldom actually get into accidents. Where as we in Canada and the US have so much faith in our roads, and cars that we very seldom really become great drivers. We talk on our cell phones, talk to our passengers, look at the scenery, and just about everything else except keep our full attention on the road. Hence we have a lot more accidents.

In the USA and Canada we loose an estimated 50,ooo people a year to traffic associated accidents, and injure another 2,000,000. This is all for an activity that the average person only spends about 1/2 hour per day at.

Another good point to consider is the fact that people are afraid to travel in Mexico, because of being killed in some kind of violence. But consider this. There are about 5 million tourists that enter Mexico in a given year. About 5 get killed in some kind of Violence. (This number is much lower than tourists to the USA by the way.)

The average tourist spends about 8 days or 200 hours in Mexico.

Now compare this to drivers, where the average driver drives for about 1/2 hour per day, or close to 200 hours per year. About the same amount of time as an average vacation to Mexico.

Out of 5 million drivers about 700 will be killed and 30,000 will be hurt. The part of this I do not understand is that people will jump in their cars, speed, run yellow lights, pass on corners, and many other unsafe practices, many times with their children in their cars. Yet these same people will quake in their boots when travel to Mexico is mentioned.

Personally I would take the activity which is 140 times safer than driving, and that is traveling to Mexico.

For the full time RV’er Mexico is fantastic. The people treat you like gold, the prices are good. The main roads are in fantastic shape, and there does not seem to be near as many accidents. To me this is a no brainer.

See you in Mexico.