[arobwk]

Cars per capita by region:

Africa: 0.05 vehicles per capita/50 vehicles per thousand people
Antarctica: 0.05 vehicles per capita/50 vehicles per thousand people

(It just tickled me, so thought I'd share.)

[Q]

OK OK  I then felt I wanted to know whether Africa had OLDER cars than Antarctica.

I only found out that Lithuania has the oldest cars in Europe.

Average age of car is over 16yrs old then I fell asleep.

[Fleecewife]

I think the type of vehicle might vary dramatically between Africa and Antarctica.  Lots of normal cars in Africa plus a few bush vehicles and motorbikes. Not many family runabouts or bikes in Antarctica I imagine

[oor wullie]

My expenses form at work has different sections for claiming different mileage rates for;
ICE Cars
Electric cars
Snowmobiles
Boats.

Never had the chance to claim for snowmobiles or boats sadly...

[doganjo]

Then there's demographics

How far do people move from place to place in Africa or in Antarctica

Not much probably, but for different reasons

No requirement for vehicles in Antarctica - they'd get bogged down in snow probably

More provincial/localised existence in Africa - no real incentive to move around much maybe?

[Fleecewife]

Then in the Arctic circle they can use dogs, which run on meat.  In polar regions and Africa they perhaps use air transport more for longer distances.  In the parts of Africa I have seen there are plenty of cars, vans and lorries for short and long distance travel and in rural and urban areas they use motorbikes too.  As in urban areas the world over, cars are used for short journeys and public transport from the suburbs, not much different from here.  In polar regions there can't be that many long distance journeys going on but for travelling on the Ice Road in Alaska they use huge lorries.  In southern polar areas they seem to have specially built tracked vehicles as there are not many roads.
To explain the statistics, perhaps in Africa fewer people own private vehicles as they either use public ground transport or fly whereas in Antarctica there simply are not many people or roads, so not exactly comparing like with like.

[arobwk]

TASers - I don't know the size of Antarctica's scientific community/population at any one time (probably growing rapidly as China sticks it's nose in), but it is absolutely microscopic compared to the African continent.  Yet, apparently, Africans statistically only own the same number of vehicles per thousand peop's. That seems "not quite right" to me and, if true, suggests how "3rd world" the African continent remains overall and potentially how exploited it is by other "global" nations (definitely including China). 

[Fleecewife]

......and GB has historically been the biggest exploiter of Africa of all......

[Fleecewife]

However, it does show the main point that statistics are only as good as their interpretation and the same stats can be use to prove and to disprove most points of discussion.