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Roula Khalaf, editor-in-chief of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
I have good news and bad news about America’s roads. The good news is that the number of people killed in traffic accidents decreased by almost 4% in 2023. The bad news is that the death rate on American roads is still 25% higher than that of a decade earlier, and three times higher than the average. Developed country.
Most commonly offered explanations for why America’s roads remain so deadly focus on broad structural factors such as vehicle size or time spent on the road, but a review of the evidence suggests that this may be wrong. Last year’s improvement is a good example. Two reasons often cited as primary causes of America’s poor performance have both gotten worse: The total number of miles driven by Americans has increased, and American cars have continued to get bigger. However, fatal collisions have further decreased.
In the United States, self-centeredness is clearly part of the road safety problem: it is a question of culture rather than geography. Americans are so attached to their cars that 63 percent of people choose to drive for trips of less than a mile, compared to 16 percent in the United Kingdom. But even after adjusting for distance traveled, death rates in the United States remain double the average for rich countries. The main reasons America’s roads are so dangerous come from how people drive, not how hard they drive.
When it comes to vehicle size, there is ample evidence that larger cars are more deadly to pedestrians, but the contribution of the overloaded U.S. fleet to its death rates proves modest. Pedestrian deaths in the United States would be about 10 percent lower if all SUVs and pickup trucks were replaced with full-size cars, according to a study by Justin Tyndall, an assistant professor of economics at the University of ‘Hawaii.
Adding to the evidence that this is not a dominant factor, car sizes in Canada, Australia and New Zealand have followed similar paths to the United States without leading to an increase in the number of death.
Another theory is that the increase in homelessness in the United States could lead to an increase in pedestrian deaths. A recent study found that there has indeed been a marked increase in traffic-related deaths among the homeless, but that can also only explain a small portion of the overall increase.
Instead, an underestimated factor appears to be not American cars, but American drivers.
In a revealing analysis last year, Emily Badger, Ben Blatt and Josh Katz of the New York Times found that the increase in U.S. traffic deaths was driven almost exclusively by pedestrian deaths occurring at dusk, under fading light, when drivers are most likely to be in danger. using their phone. A theory has emerged that the proliferation of smartphones in a population that, unlike their European counterparts, almost exclusively drives cars with automatic transmissions, gives them a false sense of security about the danger of multitasking while behind the wheel .
However, this idea only half works. Phone use while driving is a big problem in the United States, according to data from Cambridge Mobile Telematics. But just across the border, Canadians, who also drive automatic vehicles, spend less than half as much time using their devices while driving. The driving factor appears to be different attitudes toward safety, with Americans twice as likely as Canadians or Europeans to say it’s OK to use a phone while driving.
The same pattern appears in other behaviors. Americans are much less likely to wear seat belts than most Europeans and also have higher rates of drunk driving.
Since studies reveal that lack of seat belts, alcohol and distracted driving increase the likelihood or mortality of a collision to a greater extent than the size or shape of the vehicle – and that drivers Americans are more exceptional in these behaviors than in the size of their car – these factors can be decisive.
Let’s be clear: driver habits are not formed in a vacuum, and they can and should change. As transportation expert David Zipper points out, everything from street design to investments in public transportation to stricter – and enforced – alcohol consumption laws has been proven to speed, cell phone use and seat belt use shape behavior. This is also reflected in the wide variation in traffic fatality trends between U.S. states with more or less strict traffic safety laws.
When we consider all the evidence together, America’s disastrous record on the roads is neither the result of chance nor of industry-wide trends. If the United States is to reach developed-country levels of traffic safety, America and Americans must change direction.