Traffic Fatalities Are a Choice: America’s roads are more dangerous than those of almost every country in the developed world. We know how to change that.

You are as likely to die driving on an American road as you are driving in Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan. On a per capita basis, the American traffic-related death rate ranks 87th in the world. At 12.8 deaths per 100,000 people, it is double that of Greece, triple that of Austria, and six times more than Japan.

In 2022, more than 42,000 people died on American roads, and more than two million — 1 in every 170 — required emergency medical care from automobile-related accidents. The total economic cost, in medical expenses and loss of life, amounted to an estimated $470 billion.

This is not an inevitability. It is a policy decision that the federal and state governments continue to affirm. Indeed, if the United States had matched the rate of improvement in road safety since the 1970s seen in, for example, the Netherlands, Sweden, or Spain, it would have prevented 2 out of every 3 road deaths, saving 25,000 lives last year alone.

This is like saying that depression is a choice. Terribly stupid rhetoric.

Finally some talk about American road infrastructure and how inferior it is!

For us speed limits start and end in the sign posted, pedestrians and cyclists are not real people but merely a nuisance.