An analysis comparing the fatality rates per 100 million VMT in the United States and other high-income countries during a specific year must take into account the strong influence of demographic and geographic factors on the rates. In particular, urban streets are much safer than rural roads; highways engineered to high standards and with limited access such as U.S. interstates are much safer than roads built to lower standards. In 2013 the fatality rate on rural local roads in the United States was 6.6 times as high as on urban interstates. As a result, all else being equal, a densely populated, highly urbanized area will have a substantially lower fatality rate than one that is not. Recognizing the diverse environments among U.S. States, this study compared VMT fatality rates among an international selection of jurisdictions with similar environmental characteristics. The study: • Treats each U.S. State as a separate jurisdiction; specifically, the analysis compares VMT fatality rates in 2013, the most recent year that worldwide data is available, in all of the 43 high-income countries, as defined by the World Bank, with populations over 1 million to the 44 States with populations over 1 million; and • Classifies the countries and States into four somewhat more homogeneous groups, based on demographic and geographic factors: (1) Densely populated places, such as Japan, the United Kingdom, and Massachusetts; (2) Cold climates with some concentrated urban belts, such as Sweden and Minnesota (cold climates mitigate fatality rates by, among other things, discouraging motorcycle travel for much of the year); (3) Temperate places, not densely populated overall but with much of the population concentrated in large metropolitan areas, such as Australia and California; and (4) Less dense, less urbanized places, such as Ireland and Iowa. The countries and States within each of the four groups are tabulated, ranked from lowest to highest by their fatality rates per 100 million VMT in 2013. A glance at these tables reveals and a non-parametric statistical test of the rank ordering confirms that the States have significantly lower VMT fatality rates than the comparison countries that appear in the same table, when the analysis comprises all 43 comparison countries, including the high-income nations in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and the former Eastern Bloc as well as Western Europe. However, if the comparison countries are limited to those with per capita incomes similar to the United States — or limited to Western, Northern, or Southern Europe plus Australia, New Zealand, and Canada — the differences between the States and the comparison countries become non-significant. In other words, within each of these four groups, the rates for the States are similar to the comparison countries of Western, Northern, and Southern Europe as well as Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, but they are usually lower than in the high-income countries of Eastern Europe, East Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. This report is limited to a cross-sectional analysis of the fatality rates of high-income countries in 2013. In the data, demographic and geographic differences between States or countries appear to account for much of the difference in VMT fatality rates. The study does not compare types or intensity of safety practices such as traffic laws and enforcement. A longitudinal study in one country comparing, say, the fatality rate in 2015 to 1966 would tell a different story. In the United States, the fatality rate per 100 million VMT dropped by 80 percent, from 5.50 in 1966 to 1.12 in 2015. That reduction is due principally to vastly improved safety practices and only secondarily to slowly changing demographic trends. But in the cross-sectional data, there are substantial demographic and geographic differences between countries, even within the four groups. These findings reflect an apparent global similarity in traffic safety among jurisdictions with comparable economic, demographic, environmental and population density characteristics. While this analysis is limited to high-income jurisdictions, it is possible that such similarities also exist among nations within other economic levels. This international commonality underlines the need for global collaboration regarding solutions for road safety challenges and reinforces the importance of initiatives such as the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety that facilitate sharing of effective techniques for reducing road traffic deaths and injuries. (Author/publisher)
Abstract