car deaths per km

[mindstalk]

This is worth calling out from the previous post: look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate and sort by the various columns. In particular the third one, road deaths per billion vehicle-km. US is 7.3, Japan is 6.4, not hugely better. Most rich countries are better, down to 3.4 (UK) or Norway (3.0) Many rich countries are least 1/3 better than the US (5.1 or lower).

So when we talk about the 40,000 car crash deaths a year in the US, and how preventable they are, there are two dimensions: reducing the amount driven, by increasing density and mass transit and bikeability, and improving the safety of cars as they are driven, by I don't know what means exactly but roads can clearly have only 40% the death rate of US ones.

Between the two, well, Canada and Australia (large car-loving countries like the US) have less than half the road deaths per capita of the US, so 20,000 American deaths/year are easily preventable. Looking at the UK or Nordic countries, 30,000 deaths/year are preventable.

Comments

[mtbc]

How much is driver training? My Ohio test was a joke in comparison to my British one. (I hear that Michigan's is better than Ohio's.) No idea about Japanese driver ed.

I was imagining that mass transit, etc., could be key because in many American towns if you don't have a car you're mostly not much going places you otherwise would have so people might drive when they oughtn't but I'd have naively thought Japan's mass transit excellent.

[mindstalk]

Yes, the trains here make the USA look like a Third World country. The Osaka buses seem much less good, but anime and some poking around both suggest that there is rural "get out of town" service better than in the US. Nara buses looked excellent, though that might have been a tourist boost, but I hope they're better in cities that don't have subways. No idea about drivers ed. But you need to have parking to register a car, and there's little free parking.

[mtbc]

Given tricky registration/parking, I wonder if unusually many of the cars being driven are rentals? (In the US I liked that trivially cheap valet parking was often available.)

[mindstalk]

Interesting question; I have no idea.

I did find a building that seemed to be storing a huge number of identical plain cars or small trucks. Still, feels like they can't explain that much.

Also state by state variation

[joshuazelinsky]

One doesn't necessarily need to even compare to other countries. There's massive variation in the US at a state by state level. See https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/10/the-geography-of-car-deaths-in-america/410494/ and https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state-by-state .

Re: Also state by state variation

[mindstalk]

Thanks. I'd totally forgotten about that first link. It links at the bottom to a graph of deaths/VMT, where the lowest non-DC state (MA) is less than 1/4 the death rate of the top three states. It at least suggests that halving death/VMT should be possible... Ah, and your second link has actual numbers... although very different numbers; MA is more than 1/3 of MT there, yet lower than DC. Did four years make such a big difference?

Re: Also state by state variation

[joshuazelinsky]

"Ah, and your second link has actual numbers... although very different numbers; MA is more than 1/3 of MT there, yet lower than DC. Did four years make such a big difference?"

I'm not sure what you are looking at. The first link only gives numbers per 100,000 people. The two sets for using auto deaths per 100,000 look pretty similar to me. One says 5.1 for MA and the other says 4.9. Am I misreading the data?

Re: Also state by state variation

[mindstalk]

The first link has a link at the bottom to a graph on Twitter.

[elusiveat]

Seems like it would be worth running the numbers to disentangle this from typical speed limits in each nation / state / etc.

I'd guess that higher density would generally correlate with lower maximum legal speeds, which would hit both dimensions at once.

[mindstalk]

I guess that lower speeds are part of the reason for lower deaths per vehicle distance. Lowering urban speed limits is part of Vision Zero programs in the USA.

[heron61]

Is there solid data that this is the reason? I looked over the table and South Korea has roughly twice the deaths per billion vehicle-km, and their speed limits seem similar to ours (although somewhat higher in cities, which might make sufficient difference).

[mindstalk]

I said *guess* and *part*. I think effective lowering of speed limits is followed by lower death rates, but I don't have a source handy, and I didn't say that would explain all of international differences. Driver quality or attitudes toward drunk driving would matter too.

(But http://infographic.statista.com/normal/chartoftheday_5504_the_worst_countries_in_the_world_for_drunk_driving_n.jpg claims S Korea is much lower in drunk driving than the US, which is a bit lower than Canada, so that doesn't work.)

https://www.worldnomads.com/travel-safety/eastern-asia/south-korea/traffic-the-amazing-race suggests that driving practices are just that aggressive. Another article said SK had reduced its deaths by more than half... *down* to the deaths/100,000 people in the wikipedia table.

https://kojects.com/2015/11/04/traffic-accidents-in-korea/ also gives "dangerous behavior", distinct from speeding, ignoring signals, or tailgating, as the main reason. It also mentions high legal urban speeds.

[heron61]

I hadn't considered driving habits as a major source of the difference, but that sounds like changing them would be a long-term project requiring major changes in teaching teens how to drive - I'm betting we'll have automatic cars before this could make a major impact.

I also wonder if US drivers are simply worse than drivers in the EU. As for speed, wikpedia mentions that urban speeds in SK are 60-80 kph, so I think a major factor is how this actually breaks down - 60 kph isn't that much higher than most US urban speeds, but 80 definitely is.

[mindstalk]

The people in charge of developing self-driving cars keep backpedaling their optimistic predictions. It's looking like a classic case of AI overreach.

US driving habits don't seem that bad. Lowering speed limits, traffic calming, and enabling less driving would be the low hanging fruit.

[heron61]

The people in charge of developing self-driving cars keep backpedaling their optimistic predictions. It's looking like a classic case of AI overreach.

Sure, but they seem possible by 2030, and that's the earlier that I'd expect any change in driver education to have a notable impact on auto deaths/