US Traffic Safety Is Getting Worse, While Other Countries Improve

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US Traffic Safety Is Getting Worse, While Other Countries Improve
The rising rate of road deaths in the US continues to defy global trends. Here’s what traffic planners in other nations could teach their American counterparts.

By David Zipper
November 3, 2022 at 9:00 AM EDT


(Bloomberg CityLab) A few months ago the United States Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg unveiled Momentum, a new federal program created “to help countries around the world learn from our best practices in planning and modernizing transportation.”

It was a curious move for a country whose mobility network seems more likely to inspire pity than admiration when viewed from abroad. The US road transportation system is a climate bomb that generates more than twice as much carbon dioxide per capita as the roads of the European Union, thanks to the dominance of personal vehicles. American efforts to build cleaner alternatives such as high-speed rail — which is common across Japan, China, and many EU countries — have consumed billions of dollars with little to show for it.

The US underperformance in road safety is especially dramatical: 11.4 Americans per 100,000 died in crashes in 2020, a number that dwarfs countries including Spain (2.9), Israel (3.3) and New Zealand (6.3). And unlike most developed nations, US roadways have grown more deadly during the last two decades (including during the pandemic), especially for those outside of cars. Last year saw the most pedestrians killed in the US in 40 years, and deaths among those biking rose 44% from 2010 to 2020.

Instead of touting its own approaches, USDOT would be better off studying why other countries’ roads are so much safer and figure out how to apply those lessons at home. ................(more)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-11-03/why-us-traffic-safety-fell-so-far-behind-other-countries?srnd=premium