The land that claims it invented the bus and gave the world Grand Prix legend Juan Fangio left out something in its zest for motoring: It never learned to drive. Argentina has such lawless roads that proportionally more people die on them than anywhere else in the Americas, and almost anywhere else in the world.

An estimated 7,700–10,000 people a year die in traffic accidents in the cosmopolitan South American country of 36 million inhabitants, making it the No. 3 cause of death--and the leading cause of death among people under 35.

But despite a fatality rate up to 10 times higher than in the U.S. or Europe, the law is soft on drivers and even hit-and-run killers are seldom put behind bars.

"Argentina is the only country in the world where you can kill someone and keep your freedom--as long as you don't forget to use a car or a bus as your weapon," said Gregorio Dalbon, a campaigning lawyer who defends accident victims.

As anyone who has braved Buenos Aires' bad-tempered traffic knows, it is really a miracle that more people are not killed. Those who board a taxi turn pale and scramble in vain for a seat belt, a legally required precaution spurned by most of the 50,000 black and yellow taxis swarming everywhere like wasps.

The colectivos (slang for buses)--are no safer, leaving before the doors are shut with straphangers hanging on for dear life.

On avenues such as "9 de Julio," touted as the world's widest, drivers rev at red lights and inch into crossings as panicky pedestrians break into a run when the lights go amber.

Alberto Silveira, the much-traveled president of road safety group Luchemos por la Vida (Let's Fight for Life), has seen such mayhem only on the roads in China and Turkey.

Former president Raul Alfonsin did the safety lobby an unintended favor by nearly killing himself in an accident last June. He later admitted he was not wearing a seat belt, and images of the elder statesman with his neck in plaster made many people start wearing seat belts, according to a poll by a private toll road operator.

Forget for a moment the ravages of famine, flood and disease. Traffic accidents have been identified as one of the major human disasters of the late 20th century.

Road accidents kill at least 500,000 people around the world every year--increasingly in developing countries where it is estimated that 70 percent of road fatalities occur on roads crowded with pedestrians, animals, bicycles and increasingly with two- and four-wheeled motor vehicles.

By comparison, 21,751 people died last year in more "conventional" disasters, such as floods, famines and earthquakes.

According to the 1998 World Disasters Report, compiled by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the traffic accident will soon become the third-largest cause of death and disability behind clinical depression and heart disease and ahead of tuberculosis, war and AIDS.

"Few other disasters have quite the close everyday relationship of the car crash with its victims: familiarity truly breeds contempt as the individually rare collision becomes a global tide of road kill with a multi-billion dollar price tag," the report concludes.

Americans have so many distractions in their cars they are becoming part-time drivers--trying to eat, talk on the phone, use a computer, navigate and change tapes while coping with highway traffic. It's a formula for disaster.

"People forget how complex driving is," Dr. Ricardo Martinez, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said. "We're adding so many distractions we're becoming part-time drivers," said Martinez, a former emergency room doctor who saw the results of inattention first hand. "There's a price to pay in crashes."

"We are beginning to see crashes … where drivers were using laptop computers while driving and third-party suppliers are now providing hardware for mounting laptop computers adjacent to the driver or, in some cases, right on the steering wheel," his agency reported.

But it isn't just a high-tech problem, Martinez added, noting crashes can result from something as simple as trying to eat while driving.

A Canadian study found that talking on a cellular phone while driving a car quadrupled the risk of an accident and was about as dangerous as being nearly drunk behind the wheel.