Sad News

I didn't write about this until now because I wasn't sure what to say. July 6 was a tragic day here – a number of people died in a car crash. A taxi carrying university students to Cusco tried to pass a slow moving truck. Visibility was poor because of the early morning fog and the curves of the road. The highway here is a two lane highway. Passing means switching to the other side of the road and driving directly towards any oncoming traffic. On July 6, the oncoming traffic was a bus.

Everyone in the taxi died. As far as I know everyone on the bus survived, but there were some serious injuries. One of the students in the taxi was the 24 year old brother of one of our co-workers. Later that week I attended a funeral in Peru for the first time. I've never been to a funeral so full. I've never been to a funeral so sad.

“Were they wearing seatbelts?” you might ask. Of course they weren't. In many of the cabs the seatbelts don't work. In others there aren't even seatbelts. What's more, there is no seatbelt culture. The culture of auto-transport here prizes speed over safety. That's just what it is. So when cars crash, people die.

It's a cruel thing that happened three weeks ago. It's a terrible weight for our friend to carry, a terrible weight for her parents to carry. And it's angering to think that the likelihood of anything changing to prevent a similar crash is so close to 0 that it isn't worth calculating.

I realize that reading this, some people will be concerned about my safety when I travel to/from Cusco. I don't travel that early in the morning. Visibility is much better in the hours I travel. I use a seatbelt if there is one. I prefer taking buses to cars (because they're cheaper, but they also do better in a crash). Also, this isn't an everyday occurrence. I feel relatively safe to continue traveling in the cars or on the buses.