Tangled up in steel/Charles Edward Miller @Wikimedia Commons
The human costs
Part 1 of a three-part series
Every 24 days and 8 hours in these unUnited States as many people die on the roadways as were killed in the 9/11 terrorist attack, according to the latest and just released National Safety Council calculation of road deaths.
Every 12 days and 20 hours, there are more dead on U.S. roads than died in 2024 in all U.S. airplane crashes, the majority of those involving private aircraft, according to Aviation Safety Network data.
Every 2 days and 1 hour, there are more dead than killed in commercial airline flights anywhere on the globe in 2024, according to the 2024 annual safety report from the International Air Transport Association.
Every 12 hours there are more killed than were gunned down in the Las Vegas strip massacre of 2017, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
Every 2.5 hours as many die as were killed in the 1999 mass shooting at Colorado’s Columbine High School 1999, a tragedy destined to inspire future mass shootings at other schools and leave many parents fearful to this day that it could happen to their children despite the low odds.
That is a tiny, tiny fraction of the odds of an American child being killed by a motor vehicle. And dead children are only part of the collateral damage of bad driving in a society that has become fixated on driving everywhere, and not just on driving everywhere but driving there at speed, often while distracted, even in crowded urban environments.
A child in America is far, far more likely to die in a motor-vehicle crash than a school shooting even though few children now walk or cycle to school because traffic has made this so unsafe for everyone.
Real dangers
And they added this:
“…Among ‘unintentional injury deaths’ – those deaths not caused by aging, disease, suicide and homicide – transportation incidents were the most prevalent cause of death. Transportation-related fatalities
represented 38 percent of all ‘unintentional injury deaths.’
“Moreover, they were equivalent in number to the sum of the next two most prevalent causes, which were falls and poisonings….(and) deaths on the highway were 94.4 percent of the national total. If highway deaths that occurred in collisions at rail-highway grade crossings were included, the total would be even higher at 95.2 percent.”
Little has changed since that study was conducted other than that traffic deaths have inched upward after decades of decline that appear linked to safety improvements in automobiles.
It would now appear bad driving has trumped the ability of these improvements to protect people in those same motor vehicles.
The National Safety Council today puts the “lifetime risk” of death in a motor vehicle collision at 1 in 95, and reports that on average from 2007 to 2022 passenger vehicle death rates per 100 million miles driven in motor vehicles were:
- 17 times higher than for passenger trains
- 50 times higher than for buses
- And 1,000 times higher than for scheduled airlines
If anything, she was understating, grossly understating, the situation.
Your risk of death is a thousand times greater in your car or truck than in a commercial airline. But sadly, almost no one seems to care enough to do anything about making roadway travel safer.
Some people actually seem more concerned about one or a few dogs dying in the nine- to 10-day-long Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race than the five people dying every hour on or along a roadway somewhere in America.
Next: The Me, Me, Me Killers
Categories: News
Speed.
Wouldn’t lowering speed limits reduce some of these deaths? Not that speed limts are a cure-all, I know, but I remember reading somewhere that your chances of dying in a vehicle accident go WAY up once you get above 30 or 35 mph. Not that there is any political party who would pass laws to lower speed limits but still, it seems like a no-brainer.
Looking forward to the next installments. Thanks.
As noted in Part II: “As far as fatalities were concerned, pedestrians struck at 20 mph had only a 1% chance of dying from their injuries, but at 35 mph, the risk reached 19%; at 50 mph, it exceeded 80%.”
Given the speeds near 50 mph are not uncommon on the Northern Lights, Benson, Minnesota and C Street boulevards in Anchorage’s Midtown because there is no speed enforcement, maybe Anchorage’s political leaders should be given full credit for the many pedestrians who’ve died there or suffered debilitating injuries.