TRB Special Report 300 - Achieving Traffic Safety Goals in the United States Lessons from Other Nations (2010) / Chapter Skim
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2 World and U.S. Safety Trends
2 World and U.S. Safety Trends
Pages 27-50
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From page 27... ...
traffic safety problem, describing how risks differ among categories of roads, vehicles, regions, and drivers. WORLD FATALITY RATE TRENDS Nations differ greatly in traffic fatality rates (per capita and per vehicle kilometer)
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Crash and fatality rates per unit use of the road system (e.g., per vehicle kilometer) are measures of this risk.
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. Fatality rates per vehicle kilometer have declined greatly in every high-income country in the past several decades (Figure 2-2a, Table 1-1)
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30 Special Report 300: Achieving Traffic Safety Goals in the United States: Lessons from Other Nations 10 9 8 7 fatality rate (per 100 million vehicle-kilometers ) 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 Australia Austria Belgium Czech Republic Denmark Finland France Germany Great Britain Japan Netherlands Norway Slovenia Sweden Switzerland United States 1.8 1.6 1.4 fatality rate (per 100 million vehicle-km)
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FIGURE 2-2 (a) Fatality rates per vehicle kilometer, selected high-income countries, 1965– 2005 and 1997–2008.
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These curves suggest at least that some underlying universal phenomena have driven fatality rate trends toward convergence. It may be speculated that the improvement reflects a learning process by all the agents -- drivers, nonmotorized road users, road authorities, health services, and law enforcement and public safety agencies -- within the road transportation system as that system develops and matures in a country.
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The pattern of fatality rates among the states in some ways mirrors that of the highincome nations. The 2007–2008 average rate varied among the states from below 0.5 deaths per 100 million vehicle kilometers in Massachusetts and Rhode Island to 1.3 in Louisiana and 1.4 in Montana (Figure 2-5)
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state fatality rates, 1994–1995 average and 2007–2008 average.
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A second research approach to this question is to measure the impacts of particular safety interventions directly and then to judge whether the measured program effects are large enough to explain the overall trends. Studies taking the latter approach to evaluate safety programs in France, Australia, and the United Kingdom are described in Chapter 3.
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(SOURCE: NHTSA n.d.) 1.6 1.5 1.4 1.3 fatalities per 100M vehicle-km 1.2 MI MN 1.1 IL CO 1.0 NY USA 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 year FIGURE 2-9 Fatality rates, selected states with 2008 rate lower than the U.S.
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Such differences are likely to affect trends in fatality rates, but in complex ways. Trends will be affected by changes in transport habits (e.g., trends in the relative use of bicycles and motor vehicles)
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The three studies are as follows: • A World Bank study of safety trends in 32 nations worldwide over a 38-year period; • A study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety that analyzed the sources of differences in the fatality rates of the 50 U.S. states during a single time period; and • A second study of differences among the U.S.
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• In countries and years in which the number of motor vehicles grows slowly, the occupant fatality rate tends to be lower. However, this effect is small, accounting for only a few percent of the variation in fatality rates.
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among the states could be accounted for by differences in characteristics of the populations and transportation systems: population density, the percentage of the population that is urban, percentage age 16 to 20, median income, percentage with college degree, school spending per pupil, highway traffic density, and average vehicle age. For example, since rural road fatality rates are higher than urban rates nationwide, a state with a high percentage of urban travel would have a lower total fatality rate than a more rural state, even if the two states had identical rates on urban roads and on rural roads.
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Roads built to high design standards (for example, the Interstates) have lower average fatality rates than roads of lower classes, so the expectation has been that upgrading the road system would improve safety.
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• Higher seat belt use decreases fatalities. • Improved quality of medical services reduces fatality rates.
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states is differences in the distribution of travel by road type and by urban versus rural setting. Fatality rates per vehicle kilometer are 2 to 3 times higher on roads in rural areas than on urban roads of similar design and function (Figure 2-13)
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and percentage change in median age between 1975 and 2000 (bottom) for various countries.
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Whereas fatal involvement rates for cars and light trucks have been falling, motorcycle fatal involvement rates have risen sharply since the late 1990s. NHTSA reports that the fatal crash involvement rate of motorcycles nearly doubled between 1998 and 2005 (from 14.1 to 27.8 involvements per 100 million motorcycle vehicle kilometers)
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(SOURCE: NHTSA 2009, 17.) light trucks by 26 percent (from 1.4 to 1.0 involvements per 100 million vehicle kilometers)
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. The significance of these shortperiod traffic safety trends is difficult to interpret, especially since data on traffic volumes in the period are not available for most countries.
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2006. Use and Misuse of Motor Vehicle Crash Death Rates in Assessing Highway Safety Performance.
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2001. Death and Injury from Motor Vehicle Crashes: A Public Health Failure, Not an Achievement.
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