3 ms·

vehicle death rates have cratered over the decades. http://blog.fusedgrid.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/VKM-Fatalities-USA-Historic-1900-to20111.jpg http://blo

• dredmorbius 9y ago
  Interesting curves. Half the reduction occurred from 1912 to about 1922, the first decade of large-scale auto use. Bt 1940, it halved again. The next halving gets you to the eary 1970s. The present rate looks to be about 1 death per 100 million vehicle miles travelled (VMT), or roughly 1/5 the rate in 1970. My main takeaway is diminishing marginal returns, and a fairly consistent trend of halving the rate every 20 years or so, after the first decade.
  • ghostcluster 9y ago
    i do wonder if driving with smartphones has caused any sort of bump in the last 7 years
    • dredmorbius 9y ago
      They're attributed to 9% of MVA deaths, and 16% of MVA injuries as of 2016, though trends seem relatively flat (or declining) since 2010. Overall accident instances tend to scale with miles driven, which are a pro-cyclical economic factor. That is: as economic activity increases, people drive more, for both commuting and recreation. https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/distracted_driving/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/distracted_driving/in... https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/#/ https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/#/