The world's most dangerous country for drivers is hoping legislation and education will end the disregard for road rules

From the dirt road that leads to his home, César Teharan steers on to the raucous main street of a Dominican suburb on a 125CC motorbike with his two sons behind him.

It is chaos on the street. Shared taxis, often with broken tail-lights, stop indiscriminately to pickup and drop passengers. Microbuses, or guaguas, turn two lanes into three. Pedestrians sprint across the road. Drivers emerge from corner shops carrying beers in brown paper bags, stepping into diesel-belching SUVs.

Teharan and his sons, aged eight and12, squeeze together on the motorcycle's torn vinyl seat. The one helmet they have sits uselessly on the petrol tank.

Such widespread disregard for personal safety and obeying the rules of the road has helped contribute to the World Health Organisation (WHO) ranking this Caribbean nation of 10 million as the world's most dangerous country for drivers. The 2013 report found there were 41.7 motoring deaths per 100,000 residents in 2010, nudging it ahead of Thailand.

Dominican officials are trying to change a system that has allowed – some say even encouraged – a culture of indifference toward traffic rules and road safety. A proposed law, expected to be voted on by the lower chamber of congress in the coming weeks, would overhaul traffic agencies and put in place a campaign to incorporate driver education into school curriculums.

But road safety advocates fear the bill could be shelved because of resistance from powerful unions that represent a quasi-public transport system running the microbuses and taxis.

"This is a crisis in which people are dying in the streets every day," says Pablo Arredando, one of the founders of FundaReD, a Dominican nonprofit organisation dedicated to improving road safety, which helped write the bill. "We lack the will, both political and societal, to change the situation."

Traffic accidents are among the leading killers of Dominican citizens, claiming more lives than the rising levels of violent crime, which receive far more media attention.

In 2010, more than 4,100 Dominican motorists and pedestrians died in accidents. In the UK, which has six times the population of the Dominican Republic, there were about 2,300 such deaths that year.

"The accidents come from a combination of the public transportation sector … plus pedestrians, who have no way to cross the street safely," says Cesarina Nin Ferreras, who oversees analysis of traffic accidents for the government's general directorate for land transport.

Pedestrians and motorcycle drivers or passengers involved in accidents comprised 83% of traffic fatalities in 2010, according to the WHO. Only 10% of the estimated half a million motorcyclists are licensed, according to government statistics.

Advocates of the proposed road safety legislation say it is desperately needed to curb the widespread flouting of road safety rules. Street signs at major intersections warn drivers to obey traffic laws, yet these same streets are lined with petrol pumps where attendants sell beer to drivers and drive-through liquor stores that serve rum cocktails.

So far, road safety education campaigns, including those against drink driving, have not resonated with ordinary people, says Nin Ferreras. "We give talks and workshops and you see people falling asleep," she adds. "We have campaigns where we go into neighbourhoods and give out free [reflective] vests and helmets to motorcycle drivers and tell them how to get their licence, but nobody wants to go through the steps to get their licences."

Helmet laws do exist for motorbike drivers, but there is little fear of the authorities. Each year, traffic police write tens of thousands of tickets for infractions such as not wearing a helmet, running a red light, and speeding. Fewer than 10% of those tickets are paid. More than 3,400 Dominicans have accumulated 50 or more unpaid traffic fines, according to the metropolitan transit authority (Amet).

"We don't have a modern way of penalising [those who break the law]" says Tobias Crespo, a congressman who has sponsored the bill that would overhaul traffic enforcement and introduce a modern licensing system. "Nobody is held accountable. Why would people pay if they know nothing will happen to them?"

The only hope to change this is through enforcement and education, says Crespo. "We have to create a generation that respects traffic laws and human lives," he says.

To do this, the Dominican Republic desperately needs the proposed legislation. It will overhaul the 10 organisations that oversee enforcement and education of road and traffic laws, and introduce road safety classes for young people as well as driver education programmes in schools.

Standing in its way are the powerful transport unions that oppose the bill. All declined requests to be interviewed by the Guardian.

"The unions can shut down the country," Arredando says. And they often do, calling transport strikes when their business interests are threatened.

Legislators hope a watered-down version of the transit bill will pass, but it is likely to be stripped of the provisions regulating taxis and microbuses.

"This would be a start, even if it's not ideal," says Arredando. "At least we will have a starting point, because the alternative is to keep watching our sons and daughters die in the streets."