[adventured]

I already covered that quoted segment. The 21 million figure includes all infractions of any type, regardless of severity.

The primary problem in the US is aging infrastructure in sparsely populated rural areas, as stated in the study the USA Today article quotes from. Nearly the entire US gets a good violations score in terms of low instance counts, except for Oklahoma (they show an extreme number of violations), rural West Texas (also intense), and a few isolated rural pockets in eg California and Idaho (~1/10th or fewer the violation counts of the OK & W.TX examples). The OK and West TX examples are no doubt caused by the polluting energy industries there.