14 people die every day on Brazil’s roads. Is privatization the answer?

The list of priorities for Brazil’s Infrastructure Ministry is a long one. At the top, however, is its plan to privatize the country’s highways. While the main focus of this move is to reduce the size of the state and raise funds for the country’s strapped public accounts, the gains of bringing in private investors to manage Brazil’s roads could go beyond the financial, as improved infrastructure conditions could have helped avoid the loss of nearly 88,700 lives on federal roads in the past 12 years. 

According to data gathered by the National Transport Confederation (CNT) in their panel on road accidents, Brazil registered 69,206 traffic collisions in 2018, of which 53,963 had casualties, leading to 5,269 deaths. Considering the past twelve years, the number is 64 smaller than the 2011 record of 192,322 occurrences, however, that is more connected to a change in the way the Federal Highway Police reports data than to any improvement in itself. Since 2015, drivers are supposed to report accidents without victims, which explains why this sort of occurrence dropped from 98,302 in 2014 to 15,243 four years later.  

Per Jefferson Cristiano, CNT’s research and statistics coordinator, the shocking scenario is caused by a combination of factors, such as drivers’ recklessness, poor vehicle maintenance, lack of oversight and the bad conditions of Brazilian roads. 

“When you look at the federal roads system, more than 80 percent is comprised of single-track...