RICO’s Q — Tuning in to the early morning television news, the top stories are homicides and fatal traffic accidents.
As the government and much of the public focus on drug trafficking and organized crime behind the soaring homicide rates, a silent epidemic is rapidly spreading, lightly reported, and mostly goes unnoticed: the deaths on the roads.
Costa Rica is literally experiencing a bloodbath due to traffic accidents.
At the end of last year, 903 people died as a result of fatal accidents, according to figures from the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ), which, unlike the Policía de Tránsito (Traffic Police), counts those who are seriously injured and die several hours, days, or weeks later as a result of the accident.
Homicides, meanwhile, totaled 873 cases for 2025.
Although at first glance the difference seems minimal, if we consider the data from 2010 to the beginning of July of this year, it becomes clear that road deaths exceed the number of homicides by 25%, with 12,574 compared to 10,059, respectively.
The worst part is that, if past figures are any indication, Costa Rica will surpass the grim milestone of 1,000 traffic fatalities in 2026.
As of the beginning of July, a little over two weeks ago, the OIJ had already recorded 525 deaths, and half the year remains to be counted, including December, a month in which fatalities typically spike.
According to the Traffic Police, speeding is the leading cause of road deaths, followed by lane invasions, driver negligence, and pedestrian negligence. Motorcyclists head the list of fatalities.
I’ve seen at least six deadly traffic crashes this year—those grim scenes where the body is covered and police keep watch. Most of these tragedies never made headlines—just a few quick posts on local social media that barely caught anyone’s attention outside the small circle nearby.
Like in my area, the real issue is that this problem is barely being noticed in Costa Rica. It’s been drowned out, especially over the past four years, by the violent turf wars between drug cartels that have caused a sharp rise in homicide deaths.
The serious situation of fatal road accidents is going unnoticed. We’ve normalized traffic deaths as a necessary consequence of mobility, and they aren’t.
Homicides are more scandalous, but traffic deaths are there, silently adding up.
What can be done?
The time has come to enforce current traffic laws, implement technological resources such as traffic cameras, more extensive use of radar, and, of course, hire more traffic officers.
A few months back, the latest report from the Policía de Tránsito had fewer than a thousand officers on the job, all tasked with patrolling and enforcing traffic laws across the country.
When I’m riding in a car, whether I’m alone or with others, I often play a little game I call “spot the transito.” It’s a nod to a game from my younger days—“spot the punch buggy”—where passengers gently punch each other in the upper arm every time upon spotting a Volkswagen Beetle, the old ones, not the new.
Things have gotten so rough that I’ve seen people wait for hours just for a traffic officer to show up after an accident. I remember a couple who had a minor fender bender and wanted to do the right thing by getting a traffic report for their rental car. They ended up waiting over two hours in my pizzeria, but in the end, no officer ever came, and they just gave up and left.
Just last week, again in Santa Ana, around 4:00 a.m. on my way to the “feria,” I passed one of those notorious intersections. Yellow tape cordoned off the scene where an SUV and a motorcycle had collided fatally. By about 7:30 a.m., the Municipal Police were still there, holding the area until the Traffic authorities and the OIJ arrived.
Likewise, to curb fatal accidents in Costa Rica, it is essential to strengthen road safety education in schools.
It’s important to understand that without change, the situation will only deteriorate. Teaching road safety from primary school onward is absolutely essential.
We also need to launch a large-scale information campaign right away to make people aware of how serious the road safety problem really is.
One important point is that motorcyclists make up more than half of the fatalities.
The Traffic Police reported that from January to June this year, 278 people died at accident scenes. Of those, 165 were motorcyclists, accounting for 60% of the deaths. Keep in mind, the Policía de Tránsito only counts deaths that happen at the scene.
In the past few years, local (municipal) police forces have started including traffic officials. But from what my friends in the small Santa Ana police force tell me, these traffic officers mostly handle illegal parking and keep watch over accident scenes. They don’t have the authority to actively enforce traffic laws on the road.
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