Why fewer are killed in car crashes

But these three causes pose similar risks. The odds of dying due to opioid overdose are one in The odds of dying due to a fall are one in By comparison, the odds of dying in a pedestrian accident are about five times lower than dying in a car accident. Dying in a motorcycle accident is about eight times less likely than dying in a car accident.

According to the National Safety Council, the U. Of these, about 3. And about 36, crashes result in at least one death. Remember that these statistics only describe the average likelihood of dying in a car accident. Young drivers have the highest risk for a fatal car accident.

That risk falls as the driver gets older until they hit age For drivers over 75, the risk rises again. The drop-off in risk is significant as a driver gets older. A year-old driver has double the risk of dying in a car accident as a year-old driver.

Male drivers are over three times more likely to die in a car accident compared to female drivers. These errors include inattention, improper lookout, and distracted driving. Decision errors include accidents caused by speeding, misjudging the speed or position of other vehicles, and illegal maneuvers.

Speeding may provide one of the clearest indicators of risk. Performance errors include steering errors and braking errors. Christopher Ziemnowicz via Wikimedia Commons. The first three-point seat belt appeared on a car in , but it wasn't until that New York State passed the first law requiring people to use them. Now all states except New Hampshire the live-seat-belt-free-and-you-might-actually-die state requires everyone to use them. New Hampshire will ticket those who don't buckle up children.

As of , US seat belt use averages 86 percent. Yes, it is possible for Americans to drive less. And we have been. Although the general trend since has been more and more miles on the road, we've been traveling about 7 percent fewer miles per person since And fewer miles means fewer crashes. For a variety of reasons. Higher oil prices have pushed people to drive less. Fewer people were driving during the recession. The country is aging, and older people tend to drive less on average.

And young people seem to have a cultural aversion to driving, for reasons laid out here. This one is a bit complicated. The first commercial anti-lock brakes were sold on American cars in the s. H owever, anti-lock brakes by themselves don't save lives. But there's a twist! Since , all American cars have also had electronic stability control, which detects skidding and then applies the brakes to individual wheels to stop the slide.

Together, these two technologies cut fatal crashes by 15 percent in cars and 27 percent in light trucks and vans. An airbag, deployed after a crash in an Isuzu Rodeo.

Chrysler introduced the first standard driver side airbags in , and they've been mostly saving lives ever since. Cars with airbags reduce driver deaths by about 11 percent. The trend lines for the first half of are looking even better. In the first six months of this year, an estimated 17, people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes — 3. The fatality rate for the first half of is down, too: 1. Here are a few stats that are anything but: more people in cities are being killed in car crashes, and the number of bicyclists and pedestrians killed by automobile drivers is at a year high.

This is likely thanks to an increase in VMT in urban communities. Cities are bursting at the seams, and as a result, there are more people driving. But it represents a fundamental shift in American life. Up until , there were more rural deaths than urban ones.

That has now flipped. Unsurprisingly, SUVs are continuing to wreak havoc on the roads. The number of people killed while driving or riding in SUVs rose 3 percent in , the only population to register an increase. Sales of SUVs and crossovers in the US have more than doubled since and rose 5 percent and 7 percent, respectively, last year — even though overall industry sales declined 2 percent in SUVs and light trucks now make up over 60 percent of the cars bought by Americans each year.

The number of pedestrians killed in crashes involving SUVs has skyrocketed by 81 percent in the last decade, according to a report released earlier this year by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. This is mostly because of the way SUVs are designed: larger bodies and higher carriage mean pedestrians are more likely to suffer deadly blows to the torso. And higher clearance means victims are more likely to get trapped underneath a speeding SUV instead of pushed onto the hood or off to the side.

Speed is also a factor because SUVs have more horsepower than a typical sedan. But rarely do they acknowledge the undeniable truth: the best way to prevent these deaths is to design cities and residential communities to better encourage more walking and biking, and less driving. Fewer cars, not more, will help curb this carnage.