SIX out of ten road deaths worldwide take place in just 12 countries, one of which is Mexico. Dented doors and battered bumpers are backed up by official figures: every year some 24,000 people lose their lives on Mexico's potholed roads, almost double the number that die at the hands of its drug mafias. A further 600,000 are injured. The World Health Organisation reckons that, along with mountainous Peru and misgoverned Venezuela, Mexico has the most dangerous roads in Latin America.

In Mexico's case the main problem is the drivers. Fourteen of Mexico's 32 states, home to just over half the population, grant licences without setting a practical driving test. Three of those 14 run compulsory courses which students pass merely by attending. Five others have multiple-choice written exams, but they are not very hard. For example: “If on entering the vehicle we find the windscreen dirty”, one (incorrect) option is “to drive fast to clean it”. In six areas, including Mexico City, there is no compulsory training or test of any sort. Applicants in the capital need only pay 604 pesos ($45).

The lax regime is “incredible”, says Roy Rojas of the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO), a UN agency, who compares the policy to giving out guns without carrying out checks. Almost all other Latin American countries require tests, he says.

Mexico was not always so freewheeling. Until the 1990s driving tests were near-universal, but it took unusual robustness of character to pass without paying a bribe. Rather than tackle corruption, some states simply abolished the test. Others followed suit in order to attract applicants (and income) from out-of-state residents.

The disregard for road safety goes wider. The ring roads that roar around Mexico's big cities have speed limits of up to 80kph. By contrast in Costa Rica the urban speed limit is 40kph. Drivers are slack about seat belts and child-seats are rarer still. A PAHO study in 2008 estimated that on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights in Mexico City a total of 200,000 people drove while drunk.

A breathalyser blitz has helped to reduce drink-driving, says Luis Genaro Vásquez, the city's deputy attorney-general. The new menace is texting, which is not yet banned. (Talking on the phone is, though enforcement is weak.) Since 2004 the city has denied bail to those arrested for drink-driving or hit-and-run accidents, following a case in which an American banker escaped jail despite drunkenly mowing down five policemen. But some states have yet to set a blood-alcohol limit, Mr Rojas says.

Given the right training, Mexico's drivers are as safe as any other country's. An American study found that Mexican truckers had fewer accidents in the United States than their American counterparts. That might be because Mexican hauliers, along with taxi-drivers and other professionals, have to sit a driving test. Until testing becomes universal, Mexico's roads will remain lethal.