That latest traffic tally from the Ministry of Interior gives you a real chill. In just the first ten days of September, Cambodia recorded 69 road crashes, leaving 50 people dead and another 81 with injuries ranging from minor to severe. Walking out on the street these days, it is hard not to feel a bit tense.
At junctions big and small, cars and motos are jammed together day in and day out. People speed, cut each other off aggressively, and when something unexpected happens, they simply cannot brake in time. Locals love to zip around fast, weaving through alleyways with their engines roaring, while helmets often just dangle from an elbow purely to dodge the traffic police.
Sitting at a streetside coffee stall in Phnom Penh sipping an iced coffee, watching massive trucks and tuk-tuks brush past each other with barely a hair's breadth, choking on exhaust fumes and listening to a relentless symphony of car horns, hits home hard. Every time you read numbers like that and then look out at the roaring traffic right in front of you, you realize that when you are living away from home, getting back safe at the end of the day is everything.
