There’s plenty of people on the roads this weekend. Fittingly, the New York Times has an interesting information on U.S. road safety:
The United States, long the safest place in the world to drive and still much better than average among industrialized nations, is being surpassed by other countries.
Even though the nation has steadily lowered its traffic death rates, its ranking has fallen from first to ninth over the last 30 years, according to a review of global fatality rates adjusted for distances traveled.
. . .
Many safety experts cite several reasons the United States has fallen in the rankings, despite having vehicles equipped with safety technology that is at least as advanced as, if not more than, any other nation. They include lower seat-belt use than other nations; a rise in speeding and drunken driving; a big increase in deaths among motorcyclists, many of whom do not wear helmets; and the proliferation of large sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, which are more dangerous to occupants of other vehicles in accidents and roll over more frequently.
. . .
Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta has laid out an ambitious target of reducing the nation’s traffic death rate to 1 death per 100 million miles traveled from 1.5 deaths by 2008. That would translate into roughly 12,000 fewer deaths per year, given projections for increased road use. Last year in the United States, 42,815 people died in traffic accidents, the most since 1990.
. . .
Getting to his target would require a radically faster pace of improvement. As of last year, the death rate in the United States had fallen to 1.51 deaths per 100 million miles traveled from 1.58 in 1998.
Since 1970, the United States traffic death rate has fallen from nearly 4.8 deaths per 100 million miles traveled. By 2000, the rate in Britain had fallen to 1.2 deaths per 100 million miles from 6.1 in 1970. The new figure is the lowest traffic death rate compiled by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, which collects a variety of statistics from industrialized countries.
Australia’s death rate has fallen from 7.13 in 1971 � the country did not estimate distances traveled the previous year � to 1.45 in 2001. Canada’s death rate is slightly less.
. . .
Other nations have much higher rates. Turkey’s was close to 11.74 deaths per 100 million miles in 2001 and the Czech Republic was 5.21. The economic organization’s median figure in 2001 was about 2.1 deaths.
I wonder if any of these international traffic studies attempt to factor in the proportion of female drivers.