The country-by-country chart at first seems to confirm what many of us would expect: Slightly higher rates in countries such as Spain and Portugal, low rates in what we consider safety-conscious countries like Sweden and Germany. (I'm at risk of sounding like one of those annoying British tourists who stereotype every other nation! [Linked Image]).

Looking at it a little more closely, however, that bar graph is for the year 2003 only. It takes only one particularly accident-free year or one big accident which kills several people to completely skew the figures away from the average.

Does Austria have a higher-than-average accident rate? That graph seems to indicate that, yet I'm sure that when it comes to safety most of us (rightly or wrongly) would probably group Austria with countries such as Switzerland and Germany rather than those of the Iberian peninsular.

Just looking at the year-by-year statistics there for Britain shows how taking one year out of context of the average trend could be very misleading.

I do wonder, therefore, whether that second chart is really of that much value taken on its own.