Horrifically Hazardous

China's population is the largest in the world, at roughly 1.3-billion and steadily increasing. And because of the one-child policy in the country, in an attempt to keep its population growth at a controlled slower, steady level, children are all the more cherished.

When accidents occur that involve children there is hell to pay. As with the backlash from furious grieving parents whose children died in the collapse of their school buildings - that were built with low-grade and cost-cutting materials - during a devastating earthquake.

There are other circumstances that commonly occur, it would appear, that place the lives of China's children in peril. Its growing middle class increasingly able to afford what had previously been seen as unattainable luxuries. Like motor vehicles.

China's sales in their automotive sector have been booming. Over eighteen million units were sold in 2010, representing an 32% increase over 2009. China now represents the world's top automobile market.

Which also translates to an awful lot of people trying out their raw motoring skills on China's highways. Road fatalities taken from death registrations from 2002 to 2007 have steadily increased to match the increase in the sales of vehicles.

According to Chinese police the country's road carnage peaked in 2005 when 450,000 fatalities were officially recorded. Currently, the country wracks up about 190 fatalities a day.

But it is when children are involved that the statistics begin to take a human shape.

A head-on collision between a school bus and a truck in northwestern China this week took the lives of 18 children. The bus was meant to hold nine seats. Most of the seats had been removed to allow kindergarten children to cram into it for their trip to school.

Yes, there are fairly stiff regulations about such things but in rural areas they become more casual.

Two adults, the driver and a teacher were among those killed in the bus crash. Another 44 people were injured, twelve in serious condition. Police have detained the truck driver. The front section of the bus was crushed from the impact, the vehicles facing each other, surrounded by crash debris.

A month earlier 35 people were killed, 18 injured when a bus rolled after coming into collision with a car on a highway.

Police have detained the head of the kindergarten, along with two deputy country chiefs and the heads of the county's education bureau and traffic department.