XPost: sac.politics, talk.politics.guns   
   From: retards@facebook.com   
      
   CARS KILL 1.3 MILLION PEOPLE (GLOBALLY) EVERY YEAR, MORE THAN MURDERS AND   
   SUICIDES COMBINED, AND MOST VICTIMS ARE PEDESTRIANS, BIKERS, AND   
   MOTORCYCLISTS   
      
   Driving is the most dangerous thing most Americans do every day. Virtually   
   every American knows someone who’s been injured in a car crash, and each   
   year cars kill about as many people as guns and severely injure millions.   
      
   It’s a public health crisis in any year, and somehow, the pandemic has   
   only made it more acute. Even as Americans have been driving less in the   
   past year or so, car crash deaths (including both occupants of vehicles   
   and pedestrians) have surged.   
      
   Cars killed 42,060 people in 2020, up from 39,107 in 2019, according to a   
   preliminary estimate from the National Safety Council (NSC), a nonprofit   
   that focuses on eliminating preventable deaths. (NSC’s numbers are   
   typically higher than those reported by the National Highway Traffic   
   Safety Administration (NHTSA) because the NSC includes car deaths in   
   private spaces like driveways and parking lots, and it counts deaths that   
   occur up to a year after a crash.)   
      
   That increase occurred even as the number of miles traveled by car   
   decreased by 13 percent from the previous year. It was the biggest single-   
   year spike in the US car fatality rate in nearly a century, and 2021 is on   
   pace to be even worse.   
      
   Between January and June of this year, NSC reports that car fatalities   
   increased by 16 percent from the same period last year, with areas as   
   diverse as Texas and New York City reporting sharp increases. If the trend   
   continues for the rest of the year, nationwide deaths would reach the   
   highest level since 2006. The NHTSA’s preliminary data estimate a lower   
   but still dramatic 10.5 percent increase in car deaths between January and   
   March 2021 compared to the same months last year.   
      
   According to several traffic experts I spoke with, the explanation for the   
   2020 fatality spike is relatively straightforward: With fewer cars on the   
   road during quarantine, traffic congestion was all but eliminated, which   
   emboldened people to drive at lethal speeds. Compared to 2019, many more   
   drivers involved in fatal crashes also didn’t wear seat belts or drove   
   drunk.   
      
   But why has the surge persisted and worsened this year, even as traffic   
   has been picking back up and nearing pre-Covid-19 levels? We don’t   
   entirely know, but it seems to have something to do with the pandemic   
   altering traffic patterns.   
      
   The Covid-driven surge in car deaths shouldn’t obscure what was already a   
   disquieting fact before the pandemic: American automotive deaths — both of   
   pedestrians and of people in cars — are a public health emergency.   
      
   In a recent report on car fatality rates in OECD nations, the US ranked   
   among the worst. Most of America’s peers have shown a clear downward trend   
   in car fatalities over the past two decades: Belgium, France, Spain, and   
   the Czech Republic all had per capita car death rates comparable to the US   
   in 2000 and have since more than halved them. America’s fatality rate has   
   decreased, too, over the same period but not by nearly as much, and it’s   
   started to show signs of ticking back up in the past decade.   
      
   And like so many other major causes of mortality, people of color are   
   disproportionately affected. Cars last year killed 23 percent more Black   
   Americans and 11 percent more Native Americans than they did in 2019   
   (compared to a 4 percent increase for white Americans).   
      
   All this isn’t an inevitability — traffic safety experts know the policy   
   interventions needed to fix the problem. The continuing surge in pandemic-   
   era car deaths should focus national attention on implementing them.   
      
   The tragedy of road deaths   
   If the federal government undertook a national project to dramatically cut   
   the number of people being killed by cars, one compelling starting point   
   could be preventing pedestrian deaths. Pedestrians are our most vulnerable   
   road users, and they walk in many of the same environments that are   
   dangerous for drivers. A pedestrian-first focus would also make motorists   
   safer.   
      
   The past decade has seen an extraordinary increase in the number of people   
   killed by cars while walking, so much so that pedestrians account for most   
   of the recent increase in car fatalities. Cars killed 6,205 people walking   
   in 2019, an increase of 51 percent from 4,109 in 2009, according to the   
   NHTSA. (The National Safety Council estimates a higher number, 7,700   
   pedestrians killed in 2019.)   
      
   People who can’t afford cars are also less likely to live in neighborhoods   
   where it’s safe to walk. Black Americans, Native Americans, wheelchair   
   users, and people walking in low-income areas are much more likely to be   
   killed by a car, a structural disparity that worsened during the pandemic.   
      
   But for all the vulnerabilities of pedestrians in any given incident, most   
   American car deaths don’t involve them. More common are crashes of two or   
   more cars, or just one car crashing into an object like a tree, post, or   
   storefront (something that happens with bizarre frequency in the US).   
      
   During the pandemic, car fatalities worsened across all regions of the US.   
   Deaths spiked by about the same percentage in both urban and rural   
   America, according to the NHTSA, though rural areas have always been   
   highly overrepresented and remained so in 2020. In the region comprising   
   Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Mississippi, which already has   
   above-average fatality rates, deaths rose by 7 percent in 2020 and 11   
   percent in the first quarter of 2021. In New England, which has the   
   country’s lowest car fatality rates, deaths increased by 9 percent in 2020   
   and increased by 1 percent in the first quarter of this year.   
      
   The tragedy of high road death rates isn’t uniquely American. Worldwide,   
   the car death rate is even higher than in the US, and it’s especially bad   
   in the Global South. Cars kill 1.3 million people worldwide every year,   
   more than murders and suicides combined, and most victims are pedestrians,   
   bikers, and motorcyclists — not car passengers, who tend to be wealthier.   
      
   Poor- and middle-income countries have more dangerous road infrastructure,   
   older cars with fewer safety features, higher motorcycle ridership, and   
   less physical separation (like bike lanes) between different types of   
   traffic, says Renato Vieira, an economist at the Catholic University of   
   Brasília.   
      
   “Motorcycles will usually circulate in between the cars, so it’s much more   
   dangerous,” Vieira says. “The accident ratio with motorcycles is much   
   higher, and the fatality ratio as well.”   
      
   If the world is to meet the World Health Organization’s goal of halving   
   car fatalities by 2030, then it has much work to do. In the US, that can   
   start with refining our crash prevention strategy, which too often lays   
   the blame on bad drivers while encouraging safer behaviors among   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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