The ‘Messed Up Cars’ project has a massive following over on X. It was founded fairly recently, at the start of the summer of 2022. Over the span of less than 2 years, the curator of the account managed to attract hundreds of thousands of loyal fans.

At the time of writing, 537.5k people and counting follow the page on the social network.

It’s incredibly difficult to calculate the number of automobiles in the world. However, the automotive industry research firm Hedges & Company found that the ballpark is around 1.47 billion vehicles.

However, if you think that the United States is the most car-obsessed nation in the world, you’re right and wrong at the same time, depending on what numbers you look at.

According to ‘The Drive,’ China has the most cars in the world, with 415 million registered vehicles in 2022, or roughly 1 car for every 3.5 people.

However, North America has the highest concentration of cars per capita, at around 710 vehicles per 1,000 people. The US alone boasted 278 million registered cars in 2021. That comes out to around 1 car per 1.2 Americans.

Asia has the most automobiles on the road, clocking in at around 543 million cars. Europe is actually in second place, with 413 million cars. North America follows suit with 358 million.

There’s a massive gap between these three continents and all the other major regions of the world.

For example, there are ‘barely’ 84 million cars in South America. Meanwhile, the Middle East has 50 million registered cars on the roads, while the entire continent of Africa boasts ‘just’ 26 million. And, just for fun, you’ll also find around 50 cars in the far-flung icy penguin kingdom of Antarctica.

The rise in the scale of car ownership has been enormous in the United States. Statista reports that 167 million people had a driver’s license more than 3 decades ago, in 1990.

This number grew by leaps and bounds to around 222 million Americans in 2016. If the public transport and railway systems remain underdeveloped in the US, it’s likely that more and more people will feel that they have no other choice but to get their license and own a car. 

People in the US tend to prefer Asian manufacturers as well as American carmakers: General Motors (GM), Ford, and FCA (though the latter was actually created after a merger between Chrysler and mostly European-owned Fiat).

Toyota is an especially popular foreign brand in the US, with 2 million cars sold in 2018. That same year, Americans bought 2.5 million Ford cards and 3 million GM cars. 

The sad reality is that with so many vehicles on the road, accidents happen on a massive scale. The World Health Organization claims that 1.35 million people lose their lives every single year on roadways. That comes out to nearly 3,700 lives lost each day. Half of these deaths are pedestrians, motorcyclists, and cyclists.

According to the WHO, car crash injuries are the 8th leading cause of death, for all age groups, on planet Earth. It is also the number 1 leading cause of death for kids and young people aged 5 to 29.

It’s a crisis on a truly global scale. Vehicular accidents happen most often in low-income countries. 

The biggest factors that lead to accidents include speeding, not using seatbelts or motorcycle helmets, driving while distracted, piloting unsafe vehicles, and a lack of law enforcement of traffic laws.

Drivers who use their mobile phones while behind the wheel are a whopping 4 times more likely to be involved in a crash. Texting is very dangerous. Unfortunately, hands-free phones aren’t much safer than hand-held ones, either.