As widely reported in the media, US traffic fatalities declined to a record low:
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today released updated 2009 fatality and injury data showing that highway deaths fell to 33,808 for the year, the lowest number since 1950. The record-breaking decline in traffic fatalities occurred even while estimated vehicle miles traveled in 2009 increased by 0.2 percent over 2008 levels. In addition, 2009 saw the lowest fatality and injury rates ever recorded: 1.13 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled in 2009, compared to 1.26 deaths for 2008.
To put in perspective, here is where the US ranks in comparison to other industrialized nations:
Road deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in 2009:
Malaysia – 23.8
Argentina – 18.4
Greece – 13.8
Cambodia – 12.6
Korea – 12.0
Poland – 12.0
US – 11.1
Lithuania – 11.0
New Zealand – 8.9
Belgium – 8.9
Czech Rep – 8.6
Slovenia – 8.4
Hungary – 8.2
Portugal – 7.9
Italy – 7.9
Austria – 7.6
Luxembourg – 7.2
Australia – 6.9
France – 6.9
Canada – 6.3
Spain – 5.9
Denmark – 5.5
Ireland – 5.4
Iceland – 5.3
Finland – 5.3
Germany – 5.1
Japan – 4.5
Switzerland – 4.5
Norway – 4.4
Israel – 4.2
Sweden – 3.9
Netherlands – 3.9
UK – 3.8
I had no idea it was so low in the UK. Kind of shocking to me. We’re so similar in our crap cycling infrastructure that I just imagined that they’re equally unsafe when it comes to death by car.
[...] ranks when it comes to road deaths per capita among industrialized countries (hint: not so good): http://systemicfailure.wordpress.com…ic-fatalities/ Last edited by BrianTH; Today at 10:17 [...]
Higher than Israel??? The mind boggles!
Israel has one third the vehicles per capita of the US, and is so small that Israeli drivers drive much less than American ones.
The UK has *extremely* high standards to get driving licenses, and generally narrow, curvier roads with lower speed limits than the US.
While true, this is skewed by
1) The large ratio of cars to people in the US (the highest in the world according to http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/tra_mot_veh-transportation-motor-vehicles) and
2) The large number of miles driven by an average American driver. I can’t find the numbers on this one, but keeping in mind that Britons on average consume about 1/2 the petroleum Americans do (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_consumption and divide by population), I’d say they are driving significantly less, even if their cars are on average more efficient.
In short, it seems to me that the US is bound to have a much higher fatality rate because its citizens, on average, spend much more time on the road. If you were to compare road safety in fatalities per passenger-mile (as the statistics above do), I’m fairly confident America’s roads would look like some of the safest in the world.
This may also explain some of the recent dip in traffic fatalities. Although the article cited says traffic increased .2% between 2008 and 2009, that does not jive with this graph from the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/05/02/business/02metrics.html
which shows a significant reduction in average distance traveled between the same two years, for the first time since 1980.
It is correct that America’s high VMT contributes to its fatality rate. So is the solution “safer” highways and “safer” automobiles — or reducing VMT?
I suppose my point really is that this isn’t about the way people drive or the way the roads are made – America is probably at or above average on both of those counts. The “problem” is how Americans live, how much time they spend in their cars. And that is a function of how spread out Americans live their lives, and there isn’t a simple solution for that because most people don’t see it as a problem in the first place. American society is more dependent on the automobile and as a result Americans are more vulnerable to their dangers. Changing that would require not just improving the roads or training drivers better, it would require a total reorganization of American life, and I don’t really see that happening any time soon (barring a prolonged energy crisis).
I just figured out what VMT stands for, so in short yes, I think the only way to bring American traffic fatalities to European levels would be to reduce them significantly
[...] in US road safety, relative to foreigners, right? Especially given that “record” decline last year in annual highway [...]
I just to call attention to the following series of articles where I have analysis the US Traffic fatalities data, prompted mainly by the recent uptick in the fatalities for 2012, following six years of “record” declines. As I have suggested here, we have to question the use of the VMT itself. The following provides a brief summary of my findings and the link to the full article is also given below.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/143156075/Is-Vehicle-Miles-Traveled-VMT-Even-the-Proper-Metric-to-Determine-Traffic-Fatality-Rates
Early estimates by the NHTSA indicate an uptick in the US Traffic Fatalities – to 34,080 highway deaths (y) in 2012 versus 32,367 in 2011 and a corresponding increase in the traffic fatality rate y/x from 1.10 to 1.16. This would be the first such increase after six straight years of declining fatalities since 2005. The Americans-are-driving-more theory is shown to be a mathematical impossibility based on these early estimates for 2012. The VMT (the denominator x in the fatality rate) for 2012 can be calculated and works out to 2938 billion, which is lower than the VMT 2946 billion for 2011.
The whole question of how to analyze the annual and quarterly compilation of the US Traffic fatalities data is therefore re-examined and a new mathematical relation between fatalities-VMT, y = m* x^n* exp(-ax), is proposed. This is shown to explain the historical data as well as the most recent trends (2002-2012). Indeed, the power-exponential law proposed here for traffic fatality studies merits the attention of all social scientists and medical researchers interested in a broad range of fatality studies. The fatalities per 100,000 licensed drivers are shown to be still too high compared to the trends established between 1966 and 1985.