Avoid, avoid, avoid: the three major threats you should be aware of this summer

Humans are great at travelling; British people will make around 100 million trips abroad this year, most of them between May and October. But humans are poor at assessing risks. On those trips, the vast majority of us will return with nothing but happy memories. However, sadly, recent history suggests around 5,000 of those UK citizens will die.

Each fatality is a tragedy – all the more so, if it is avoidable. As the main summer season begins, I want to focus on the three key threats: the road, the water and the mosquito. Act appropriately on each, and you will dramatically improve the survival odds in your favour.

Thailand is a useful exemplar. This enticing and exciting destination will attract around one million British visitors in 2025. Like most other nations, Thailand is much more dangerous than the UK. The main threats facing British travellers to this tropical gem are road accidents and drownings; diseases transmitted by mosquitoes also pose a risk.

Yet the Foreign Office’s “Safety and security” travel advice for Thailand begins arbitrarily with terrorism, warning: “There is a high threat of terrorist attack globally affecting UK interests and British nationals.”

Even if the UK government won’t help travellers focus on the biggest dangers, you should. So please read on to learn what you can do about them.

Road accidents

“By the time you have read this page, at least five people will have died in road traffic crashes” – so says Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organisation, at the start of the latest Global Status Report on Road Safety. Someone dies in a road accident every 26 seconds, on average. “Mobility must not, and need not, come with a tragic cost in human lives,” he adds.

For the visitor, rail and air travel are statistically far safer than self-driving or (even riskier) riding a motor scooter. Thailand, with a population roughly the same as the UK, is once again a good example. The death toll on the roads is 15 times higher than in Britain. Two out of three of the fatalities involve riders and passengers of motorcycles and three-wheeled tuk-tuks. About the riskiest activity for any young backpacker: renting a motorbike, particularly after drinking.

Accidents in water

The average bather swims at around 2mph. That happens to be the…