Road safety risks on various Camino routes

[C clearly]

Here's an article about a recent analysis of 408 stages in 7,270 km of 12 pilgrimage routes to Santiago, which identified 958 sections of road safety risks. It's in Spanish, but you can translate easily using the Chrome browser. It includes a link to this website which provides the details.

I haven't taken the time to study it yet, but it looks very interesting and potentially useful for pilgrims.

 

[Smallest_Sparrow]

@VNwalking 45 risk points on the Camino Catalan …

 

[dick bird]

file:///E:/CAMINO%20READINGS/health%20issues%20on%20the%20camino-main.pdf

In case anyone is not taking this seriously (unlikely), this is a link to an letter in 'Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease'. It points out that while acute coronary syndrome is the biggest cause of deaths of pilgrims, road accidents are second.

 

[C clearly]

I don't know how to access that file, but it's OK - I do believe road accidents are one of the biggest hazards.

 

[dick bird]

This might work better. I thought it would be a good idea to put this on the forum because we talk a lot about this or that hazard and how serious they are, so it is good to have solid academic evidence to back up what we say.

 

[Smallest_Sparrow]

I would expect that heart attacks and road accidents are the major causes of death for people walking or biking hundreds of km often on or crossing busy roads—Sutton’s law. I didn’t look at every Camino in @C clearly link but did check quite a few. Not surprising that the Caminos we all complain have a lot of road walking have a lot of risk points noted compared to one we don’t mention as having a lot of road walking. When I walked on road shoulders I walked against traffic, put my pack rain cover on orange side out even if not raining, and carried my poles in my outside hand. I stayed off roads as much as possible early in the am and all of my clothes had reflective bands. If it was raining or foggy, or I had to walk roads in dim light I added a reflective belt across my body and runners lights on chest, pack, wrists and ankles.

 

[DoughnutANZ]

This might work better. I thought it would be a good idea to put this on the forum because we talk a lot about this or that hazard and how serious they are, so it is good to have solid academic evidence to back up what we say.

I wouldn't place much faith in a four paragraph paper from an unknown author.

 

[VNwalking]

There are a bunch of variables that affect risk, some more than others.

From one of the links that @C clearly posted:

Risk Threshold has been obtained through multi-criteria analysis, calculating the parameters of visibility, road speed, traffic intensity, volume of pilgrims, vertical and horizontal signaling and East-West orientation of each point.

I am surprised they didn't simply analyse accident data, which would surely be a more direct indicator of risk.

 

[dick bird]

I wouldn't place much faith in a four paragraph paper from an unknown author.

Not a paper, or an article. A letter. Here are the contact details etc of the writer.

Peter P. Felkai University of Debrecen, Medical University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Division of Metabolism, Section of Travel Medicine, Hungary E-mail address: peter.felkai@soshungary.hu

He includes a graph. Here is the reference for it:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmaid.2018.01.011 Received 7 August 2017; Received in revised form 26 January 2018; Accepted 31 January 2018 Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease 22 (2018) 73–74 Available online 06 February 2018 1477-8939/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

He also gives this as a website:

Informe Estadistico Ano. Oficina del Peregrino Santiago de Compostela 2016.https://oficinadelperegrino.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/peregrinaciones2016.pdf. Retr.: 2018. jan

The letter was published in a professional journal so the information is likely to be pretty reliable, even if not actually peer-reviewed.

 

[Roland49]

My mother had a good saying: life is dangerous - it unavoidably ends with the death.

This over-securism, over-insurism is nothing, that make life easier or safer.
Take care!