As most of us know, highway safety in other countries can be much more dangerous than in the United States and Canada. STN global blogger Anson Stewart reports on some close calls he’s had as he’s traveled through Central America.
There have been at least seven incidents in the countries of Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras that have occurred on some of the very roads Stewart has traveled. As he states in today’s blog post:
I have been blessed in my travels so far, staying one step ahead of various incidents affecting the countries I have visited…I hope that I continue to stay safely ahead of such happenings. (Or maybe that such happenings stop following me?)
Several of the crashes have involved recycled American school buses. In San Salvador, El Salvador, Stewart recounts how gangs often extort local bus companies.
“A few weeks after I traveled through, a new anti-gang law led to increased threats against bus operators, many of whom responded by simply cutting service for day,” he writes.
Then, in Honduras, at least 13 people were killed in a head-on collision between a bus and a truck on the highway between El Progresso and Tela, the same route Stewart had traveled.
For more on Stewart’s journeys, visit his blog.
STN’s Stewart is a graduate of Swarthmore College and a recipient of a 2010 Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, a grant to study abroad. Stewart’s project is “School Bus Migrations: Recycling Transit in the Global South.”
