A fairly amazing statistic reported in the lead story in Sunday’s editions of The National:

The second-leading cause of death in the UAE in 2010 was “road injury”. Which trailed only heart disease for deaths — 2,326 to 1,838.

Let’s see if we can figure out why that might be. Two distinct concepts are at work here.

1. This is a dangerous place to drive. Both in the cities, in traffic, but particularly on the major highways, where the speed limit is 140 kph (87 mph). If you have driven to the stretch of U.S. Interstate 15 from Barstow to Las Vegas, you get an idea of roads here. Mostly flat desert, nothing to see, often extremely hot, and lots of people driving as fast as possible so they can end the ennui of the trip. And a significant number of people who live in Dubai and work 90 miles away in Abu Dhabi (or vice versa), so lots and lots of long commutes. A recipe for accidents.

2. Most expats must leave the country after age 60. Thus, the road-death rate — which is high, yes — is magnified because 85 percent of the people who live in the UAE (approximately 7 million out of the 8 million here) are quite unlikely to die in the UAE. The other leading killers here — stroke, respiratory infections, diabetes — are associated with advanced age. And this is a country with very few people of an advanced age.

Thus, the 85 percent of the people here who are not citizens contribute significantly to the “road injury” death statistic. (Most deaths from vehicles striking pedestrians involve “laborers” from the subcontinent.) But expats do not contribute much at all to “natural causes” of death.

The leading causes of death in the UAE in 2010:

1. Heart disease (18 percent)

2. Road injury (14 percent)

3. Stroke (6 percent)

4. Diabetes and lower respiratory infection (each 3 percent)

The study was done by the University of Washington, and the UAE was placed into a 15-nation “league” of countries with economic and/or geographic similarities. Among them: the U.S., Iceland, Switzerland, Canada, Norway, Qatar, Kuwait, Singapore.

The UAE was at the bottom of the rankings (No. 15) in these three categories:

–Deaths per 100,000 people, at 615; Iceland was No. 1 at 365; the U.S. was 13th (516), ahead of Bahrain, behind Kuwait.

–Life expectancy at birth, at 76.3 years; Andorra was No. 1 (82.6) and the U.S. 12th at 78.2.

–Health-adjusted life expectancy, at 65.1 years. A semi-complicated statistic that, in simplest terms, is about “quality-of-life expectancy”. The U.S. was 11th, at 67.9, and Singapore led at 71.1.

In a sidebar to the main story, analysts blame obesity and poor diets for the relatively poor UAE statistics, especially among Emiratis, who in the space of a couple of generations have gone from barely above subsistence living to fast food.

So, anyway, that number, for percentage of UAE deaths from road injury — 14 percent — has to lead the world, doesn’t it? What other country skews so young and has such dangerous roads? None, I should think.