Highway Deaths In US States, As A Proportion Of Population (2022)

Compared with other highly-motorized countries, the USA does badly regarding highway safety. If this is taken one stage further and individual American states are compared with those same international standards, things start to look even worse. No less than eleven U.S. states have worse road-death rates, per head of population, than the worst country in the international listings.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) operates the International Road Traffic and Accident Database (IRTAD), which lists road-crash casualty statistics from thirty member countries, including the USA.

The critical parameter by which fatality figures are compared in the IRTAD is “deaths per 100,000 population,” yet this measurement is rarely seen in U.S. statistics. Therefore, the Drive and Stay Alive staff have taken publicly available highway fatality data and applied this approach. The results are shown below, from which it will be seen that several American states have particularly shocking death rates.

Copyright ©, Drive and Stay Alive, Inc., 2023

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SOURCES:

1. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, figures for July 2003 (chronologically accurate figures would presumably be marginally lower, in which case the death rate would appear even worse)

2. Source: Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), NHTSA

3. The number of fatalities, divided by [population divided by 100,000]

4. As can be seen, a state’s highest number of deaths does not indicate the relative level of any danger. California’s rate is comparatively reasonable.

5. Source: IRTAD — Selected Reference Values for the Year 2001

6. Source: IRTAD, 2001

Unfortunately, the USA fares severely in the latest available (i.e., 2001) IRTAD listings. Of the countries listed, America is — at best — in 23rd place (see below).

The question mark hanging over America’s actual position comes from our concern, at Drive And Stay Alive, about the reliability of data from Turkey — ostensibly in top place in 2001 with a death rate of just 5.6  — but given the fact that much of their other data is absent, together with the alleged and — to us — unbelievable rate of improvement in Turkey’s death-rate figures over the last few years, and given our knowledge of driving conditions in Turkey, we would choose to set aside the statistics in question. Hence, if one includes the Turkish figures, the USA is in 24th place out of thirty countries, and if one excludes Turkey, the USA is in 23rd place.