For the last 50 years, the U.S. has increasingly fallen behind most other industrialized countries when it comes to traffic fatalities. But the Biden administration's transportation strategy offers an opportunity to change that trajectory — Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has called the U.S. traffic fatality rate a "crisis" and promises to
release a first-ever National Roadway Safety Strategy.
One way we can take maximum advantage of this opportunity is to seek lessons learned from countries that have blazed a path toward Vision Zero, the goal for zero traffic fatalities that has been embraced by policy makers around the globe.
Exemplar countries have embraced a holistic approach to traffic safety. This is an important strategic reframing of the issue, grounded in the belief that improving safety is about much more than just changing user behavior or developing better technology.
Our recent
research focuses on the Netherlands, which went from a traffic fatality rate that was almost as bad as that of the U.S. in 1970 to now having one of the lowest rates in the world. The top-line numbers are eye-opening: In 1970, the Netherlands experienced 245 traffic fatalities per million people, almost as high as the U.S. rate at 257 per million. The U.S. also had a much lower rate of fatality when measured in relation to fatalities per miles driven. But by 2019, the fatality rate in the Netherlands had plummeted to 34 per million, 70% lower than that in the U.S.
But what is even more astonishing are the outcomes for different classes of road users. As a backdrop, over the last 10 years or so,
traffic fatality rates for pedestrians have been on a troubling upwards trend in the U.S. — a trend that has gotten a
lot of media coverage, and rightly so. But if we just look at the last decade, we miss the true tale of the public policy disaster that these numbers tell. In 1970, the traffic fatality rate for pedestrians in the Netherlands was 430 per million pedestrians, making them much more at risk than people in vehicles, who had a rate of 200 per million. The corresponding numbers in the U.S. were 600 and 240, for people on foot and in vehicles, respectively.
But what is even more astonishing are the outcomes for different classes of road users. As a backdrop, over the last 10 years or so,
traffic fatality rates for pedestrians have been on a troubling upwards trend in the U.S. — a trend that has gotten a
lot of media coverage, and rightly so. But if we just look at the last decade, we miss the true tale of the public policy disaster that these numbers tell. In 1970, the traffic fatality rate for pedestrians in the Netherlands was 430 per million pedestrians, making them much more at risk than people in vehicles, who had a rate of 200 per million. The corresponding numbers in the U.S. were 600 and 240, for people on foot and in vehicles, respectively.
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