143
Only states/provinces over a population of 2,000,000 are shown.
Mississippi is raising their speed limit to 75. That should help.
this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
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Survival of the fittest (or largest)
The comparison is not a perfect one. Deaths per capita might not be as useful a metric as deaths per 100,000 km driven could arguably be better. But then you're perhaps not taking into account deaths of pedestrians & cyclists. No stat is perfect, but this is interesting.
I would usually agree with this kind of normalization, but in this case I actually think it would actually obfuscate the picture. Safer roads are a good thing, but if traffic deaths are reduced because more people bike or take the train, that's still a win. Roads and cars are inherently dangerous, and that danger needs to be minimized using multiple strategies. We need to focus on holistic changes that consider people's behaviour and their interactions with the built environment.
When people feel they absolutely need to drive, that's a failure of infrastructure.
Deaths per capita might not be as useful a metric as deaths per 100,000 km driven could arguably be better. But then you’re perhaps not taking into account deaths of pedestrians & cyclists.
I would argue that deaths per distance traveled (even if it included modes other than driving) could be worse because it might skew the results in favor of sprawl-y countries with a lot of freeway driving.
The pursuit of "safety" (measured in deaths per distance traveled) has been the excuse for a lot of terrible design decisions in traffic engineering, because keeping the number of deaths the same while increasing the speed and distance traveled looks like a win.
Yes.
If they make you drive a lot it's a systemic/infrastructural problem just like having bad roads & low standards for car safety and maintenance.
Valid, but only if you also include the distance travelled by other means than by car.
Being compelled to drive more is kind of the problem.
So Canada and Australia arent the outliers:
(Of which EU countries are at 4.6 for 2023.)
Please keep in mind that these numbers are per million inhabitants. The numbers in the post are per 100.000.
So Romania would be at 8.5 traffic fatalities per 100.000 inhabitants.
Your post is from 2020, I'm not saying they are wrong numbers, but keep in mind: a lot of the year everyone was in lockdown, which might skew the numbers
That's why I added the 2023 data, to show that it's not that much dif (4.2 in 2020 vs 4.6 in 2023). But you are completely right.
I think there are some African countries that can challenge the top US states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
older data though.
Yes, there is a lot of correlation with safety standards (eg how much grip in various conditions tires have to provide, car safety & stability system, maintenance & road worthiness), which usually correlates to GDP.
Other main things are prob more cultural (attitude towards speeding & drunk driving, commuting alternatives, penal system, etc).
NY being so low relative to all other states proves mass transit saves lives.
I'd like to propose that many of these states (left leaning ones near the bottom) would be lower if it weren't for visitors from the others. I think our infrastructure is too well marked and clean and it causes people not used to things, like bots spots and street lights, to get distracted while driving,
What are bots spots?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botts%27_dots
reflective bumps in the road
That article says they're non-reflective.
Which makes me wonder...what exactly is the difference (in purpose or experience) between them and rumble strips?
my bad, they are pretty high vis!
Oh! I had just been calling those things 'road bumps'.
There's my state of Pennsylvania right in the middle. In every statistic I've ever seen we are right in the mathematical middle.