On Wednesday, February 21, a bus tumbled over a cliff in Peru, killing at least 44 passengers. The bus was traveling on a narrow but important highway, the Pan-American Highway in the state of Arequipa, and the news horrified the nation, as it came less than two months after another almost-identical bus crash on January 2, also killing dozens of victims, on the same stretch of highway, an area so serpentine that sections are known by names like “Devil’s Curve.” Such events occur on a daily basis in the third world, but rarely make the international news. Much of the...