08/11/2026
As an elected official, I am keenly aware of a grim reality: Every road death in America is a policy choice. We have failed to design our vehicles, roads, and walkways to adequately protect the lives of the people that rely upon them. It's time to change that.
Road deaths in the United States have fallen much more slowly than in other rich countries.
Most high-income countries have reduced road deaths substantially over the past decades. But the United States has made much less progress than other rich countries, and has even gone backward since the mid-2010s.
In this chart, we compare the trends for the US and a selection of other high-income countries to illustrate this point.
Consider Germany, which provides a useful comparison. In 1980, the US had about 25 road deaths per 100,000 people, and Germany had 22. But in the decades that followed, Germany’s rate fell steadily, while the US rate declined more slowly, and even rose again. In 2023, the last year in the data, the US rate was more than 4 times Germany’s.
In 2024, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in the US published a report that traces the gap to a mix of road-safety measures that other rich countries use more widely, such as speed and red-light cameras or lower limits where people walk.
There’s also a connection with how much Americans use their cars. In the US, people drive much more. However, that doesn’t fully explain the gap — US roads are also significantly more dangerous than those in Germany per kilometer traveled.
(This Data Insight was written by Esteban Ortiz-Ospina.)
