18,000 Roadway Deaths in 6 Months

[Tony T]

Lets be safe out there…

18,000 Roadway Deaths in 6 Months (https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/nearly-18000-killed-on-us-roadways-between-january-and-june/2016/10/05/25e796ac-8b00-11e6-b24f-a7f89eb68887_story.html)
Nearly 18,000 people died on U.S. roadways in the first six months of this year, an increase of more than 10 percent from the same period in 2015, according to new estimates released Wednesday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.




http://assets.amuniversal.com/bbde61a06e1e0134d26d005056a9545d

[soulspinner]

50.5 billion extra miles driven goes a long way to explaining it. Wanna retire where there are few cars............

[nooneline]

50.5 billion extra miles driven goes a long way to explaining it. Wanna retire where there are few cars............

Yeah.
The number of deaths is really astounding and sad.

But it's worth noting a few silver linings:
1The overall number of deaths has been going down, from a high of nearly 55,000/year in the 1970s
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/Motor_vehicle_deaths_in_the_US.svg/700px-Motor_vehicle_deaths_in_the_US.svg.png

The number of deaths doesn't tell the whole story - there are other ways to look at it, including deaths per population (the rate), and deaths per miles traveled, as soulspinner points out. Fortunately, both of those are trending downward, too:

Deaths per total population
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/U.S._traffic_deaths_as_fraction_of_total_populatio n_1900-2010.png/1280px-U.S._traffic_deaths_as_fraction_of_total_populatio n_1900-2010.png

Deaths per miles traveled
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d8/USA_annual_VMT_vs_deaths_per_VMT.png/1280px-USA_annual_VMT_vs_deaths_per_VMT.png

Even though the number of miles traveled increases, the overall safety (as indicated by deaths per miles traveled) is improving: deaths/distance has been steadily declining.

This 10% increase has people worried. It's concerning, and tragic for those involved, but from a big picture, it could be a statistical blip that is counter to long-term trends, and not indicative of a changing trend. This sort of thing is not all that uncommon - and is a reason why long-term trend analysis is important (ie we won't know for sure for a few more years).

All these data came from the wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year), which granted only has complete data as recently as 2013, but still provides some reassurance.

[BobO]

his 10% increase has people worried. It's concerning, and tragic for those involved, but from a big picture, it could be a statistical blip that is counter to long-term trends, and not indicative of a changing trend. This sort of thing is not all that uncommon - and is a reason why long-term trend analysis is important (ie we won't know for sure for a few more years).

Agreed. To take that same thought a bit farther, the data needs to be further broken down to specific users. I have been looking for data sets that show non-vehicular user death rates and have been unable to find anything that I feel good about evaluating trends with.

Cars themselves are allowing users to survive increasingly severe incidents. I suspect this is the main reason for lower death rates per mile. The same is not true for cyclists. At the same time cars are being built with non-tactile controls, which I believe are inherently dangerous to other users of the roads.