To add a personal perspective, when I got my first car in 1970, there were about 50,000 deaths per year for 200 million people. We were driving 75 - 80 on the i

To add a personal perspective, when I got my first car in 1970, there were about 50,000 deaths per year for 200 million people. We were driving 75 - 80 on the interstates in the midwest on bias-ply tires with drum brakes and solid rear axles. Despite more than a 50% increase in population, total fatalities are under 35K/year, and trending down. By 2013 (the last year in wikipedia), the fatality rate was 2.5X lower than 45 years earlier.