I’m a bit late on this, but it’s still worth mentioning. Via the NY Times:
Traffic deaths in the United States declined last year, reaching the lowest level in more than a decade, the government reported Thursday. Some 41,059 people were killed in highway crashes, down by more than 1,600 from 2006. It was the fewest number of highway deaths in a year since 1994, when 40,716 people were killed.
You can’t attribute the entirety of the decline to reduced driving: law enforcement and vehicle safety both play important roles. But driving less and slower driving matter a lot too. So while I’ve complained that the recent gas price spike is mostly bad news, this definitely qualified as a silver lining:
Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said the sluggish economy was likely a factor in the declines. He predicted that the combination of a slowing economy and gas prices approaching $4 a gallon throughout the U.S. could lead to further reductions in highway deaths in 2008. Many states have reported double-digit drops in fatalities during the first part of this year.
Nice to hear.
But still: does anyone else find it appalling that more than 40,000 people die on American roads every year? Every time I see these figures, I’m shocked.
A single year of driving yields 10 times as many American dead as five years of war in Iraq.
Iain
Americans kill each other far faster than terrorists can. (Not that I support or like terrorist activity but at least get some prospective.)I haven’t any data to back it up but I heard that as a result of 911, Americans started driving cross country because they were scared of flying / terrorist attacks. But more people died in car crashes because of the extra car travel the next year than died in 911? (No disrepect intended to the people who suffered.) Is anyone able to confirm it?In Australia, population 21M people we kill over 1600/yr. We have killed 175,000 on the roads since records started in 1925. WW1, WW2, Korea and Vietnam only killed about 89,850 Australians in total. So we have killed twice as many on the roads as our war time enemies. I do find that appalling, some of them were my friends. I always riden a bicycle when possible and don’t drive much anymore. Good luck with changing America away from the car culture.
robert wallis
Instead of blaming our “car culture”, we should blame the civil engineering and transportation engineering professions for their professional negligence. I cannot understand why people do not hold them accoutable. Our transportation system kills because of poor design. Streets and highways could be designed as a safe place. They could be designed to reflect the reality that many of those who use them are driving drunk or drugged.
Wes Gallaugher
I very much disagree with Mr Wallis’s unprofessional comment in blaming transportation engineering for “professional negligence”. Of the billions of road and highway intersections and the millions of miles of roads, maybe two or three percent of these need some significant safety fixes. This does not compare to the 15 to 20% of idiots or drunks that get behind the wheel of a vehicle that are the primary cause of accidents. How in the world could one design a highway to be safe for a drunk driver, and if we could do such a thing, who would be willing to pay for such an outlandish design.
morgan
IAIN,On August 5th of this year on the Diane Rehm show, Daniel Gardner, Canadian journalist and the author of “The Science of Fear”, talked about the impact of travel-mode switching following 911. One could also read his book.
morgan
IAIN,On August 5th of this year on the Diane Rehm show, Daniel Gardner, Canadian journalist and the author of “The Science of Fear”, talked about the impact of travel-mode switching following 911. One could also read his book.