Tougher drunken driving laws, lower speed limits and stricter
seat belt laws are the best ways to reduce traffic deaths in the
United States, say researchers at the U-M Transportation
Research Institute. “Despite recent major improvements in road
safety in the U.S., the current safety level is far below the
level of the best-performing countries,” said Michael Sivak,
research professor at UMTRI. Sivak and colleague Juha Luoma, an
UMTRI visiting research scientist from the VTT Technical
Research Centre of Finland, compared the amount and kinds of
fatal crashes in the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden and
the Netherlands. They found that the number of road deaths has
fallen in all four countries since 2006. However, the fatality
rate per population is much higher in the U.S. — 124 deaths per
million people, compared to 43 in the U.K., 42 in Sweden and 40
in the Netherlands. Sivak and Luoma say that the average annual
distance driven per capita in the U.S. is about twice that of
the three European countries.