Simon Calder: Don't those FO chaps ever go abroad?

The Man Who Pays His Way

"As Soon as you cross the Channel, the risk of dying in a road accident doubles." Such hard-hitting travel advice sums up the Foreign Office's new determination to limit the damage to Brits abroad, with the "Know Before You Go" campaign that was launched this week.

Unfortunately, the road death toll fails to feature in the official travel advice for France (www.fco.gov.uk/travel), which has very little to do with staying alive. Paragraph after paragraph details the latest scams designed to separate hapless tourists from their property, from "thefts of alcohol and cigarettes from British-registered cars" to pickpockets at Charles de Gaulle airport and bag-snatching on the Cote d'Azur. Eventually you find a reference to road safety, but only to the "mountainous and narrow" roads in Corsica where British visitors rarely drive, and which anyway cannot hold a headlamp to the sinuous chemins in the Alps and Pyrenees.

The Foreign Office also demonstrates a capacity for stating the painfully obvious: among its travel tips for France is "Remember where you are staying – keep a note of your hotel address". If you are heading across the Atlantic, bear in mind that "The USA is a foreign country; some laws and customs are different." Quickly, though, the advice swerves from the fatuous to the fearsomely difficult: you are advised to memorise the number and place and year of issue of your passport, an admonition that apparently applies only to American-bound tourists.

The foreign Office deserves two cheers for at last addressing seriously the fact that a significant minority of the 25 million or so of us who take a foreign holiday each year are woefully unprepared. The research offered by the FO is not without enigma – 19 per cent of travellers consider insurance to be unnecessary, yet a fifth of those cavalier tourists take it out anyway. Some travellers fondly, but wrongly, believe that the local British Embassy possesses a diplomatic "Get out of jail free" card that will extricate them from any legal or financial scrapes; the campaign crushes this misconception. But looking at some of the advice, you do wonder if the people who put it together have been abroad during the past 10 years.

"Make sure whoever you book with is Abta or Atol." The implication is that the 15 million people who will take a no-frills flight this year are being foolhardy; in fact, there is no need for low-cost airlines to join the Association of British Travel Agents or obtain an Air Travel Organisers' Licence. The same applies to cross-Channel operators such as Eurostar and P&O Stena. All must be miffed at the impression that buying from them is risky. Certainly there is a good case for never buying an air ticket direct from a traditional airline: you will almost always get at least as good a deal through an agent. But anyone who demands from easyJet evidence of the company's financial standing before booking a flight is likely to be invited to travel with another airline.

On the subject of money, you are advised to "take a mixture of cash and travellers' cheques" – evidently the diplomats distrust these new-fangled plastic cards on which so many of us rely. Should you explore the advice for Kenya, however, you are advised not to bring cash. I don't know about you, but I can't recall in the past decade taking travellers' cheques anywhere except the USA, where you can spend the dollar variety like cash.

Everywhere else in the world falls into one of two camps: either the banks have hole-in-the-wall ATMs that miraculously accept your card, offer instructions in English, and dish out the local dosh (but see Warning of the Week, below); or there is only one monetary language that counts, and that is the US dollar – preferably clean, low-denomination bills, because of all those forged $50 and $100 bills.

Staying alive is more of a pressing concern, and this is where the Foreign Office should spell out some awful truths. Here's one: instead of poring over all the well-meaning travel advice put out about miscellaneous rebel factions, spend it looking at some accident statistics that show that road deaths in France are twice as high as in Britain. For Greece, double the fatality rate again. And in Turkey, 15 times more people die per billion passenger kilometres than in the UK. Armed with this information, you may wish to select a safer mode of transport than driving in terrain that is as unfamiliar as it is lethal.

Another subject that is more worthy of your time than boning up on the latest "attacks on tourists while loading shopping into their vehicles" at hypermarkets in Calais: reducing the risk that you will become one of the many who drown or die in accidents in the water abroad. Make sure you know how to cope if a rip tide threatens to send you out to sea. Keep a healthy distance from jet skis and under-qualified scuba diving tutors. Then you will be less likely to perpetuate the statistic that one British traveller perishes every three days in foreign waters.

The Americans are way ahead in the field of offering no-nonsense advice. Last week, there was a massive jail break in southern Guatemala. More than 70 of the country's most dangerous criminals escaped. The government has responded with a huge crackdown that makes moving around Guatemala fraught with problems. The State Department e-mailed everyone on its travel advice list, detailing the difficulties and adding a warning that the US Embassy in Guatemala City had banned staff from travelling to the area of the escape (you can see the full horror story on the internet at http://travel.state.gov/guatemala_announce.html).

Singapore's laws get it in the neck, once again; the press release put out by the FO highlights the wide range of offences that the city-state enforces. Fair enough, a fine for chewing gum on public transport seems steep, but plenty of other countries have penalties for smoking in public buildings, littering and jaywalking. Talking of necks, it might have been better to remind people that the death penalty is imposed for drug traffickers in Singapore.

Instead, Cyprus is picked out for the severity of its drugs laws. As Cole Moreton pointed out in last week's Independent on Sunday, Cypriot police are cracking down on clubbers who show contempt for the law, but not to the extent of life imprisonment – the penalty the FO warns drug users about. A small number will perhaps be deterred, and enjoy their drugs elsewhere, but the vast majority will have a good laugh and make a mental note never to allow the Foreign Office a shred of credibility about its travel advice.

We deserve the glib "avoid trouble spots" and "plan to stay healthy" about as much as "wrap up warm, don't talk to strangers and avoid funny foreign food".