[stellalo]

> At 12.8 deaths per 100,000 people, it is double that of Greece, triple that of Austria, and six times more than Japan.

Should this not be measured in terms of fatal accidents every million of km driven? To normalize by how much people drive on average, and by the average vehicle occupancy.

(Not saying this is easy.)

[mrighele]

If you build your infrastructure in a way that people have to drive much more to do the same, should you really discount this difference ?

I rarely drive the car because I can reach by walk any place required by my daily necessities... of course I don't risk a fatal accident as much as somebody that drives daily for work and has to take the car for any kind of shopping.

Put in another way: if are considering ways to lower traffic fatalities, lowering the time that people need to spend in their car is one way to do it.

[DangitBobby]

The article is trying to say Americans are dying more than they have to because we don't invest in safe infrastructure. With that framing, a solution would be to invest in safer infrastructure. But if it turns out we did the wrong thing because we used the wrong metric and spent a bunch of money on it, it would be a gigantic waste. If the reason is because we drive more than other countries, that's what we should try to address.

[californical]

Well, the two go together.

Safe infrastructure can be fully separated bike paths - a road network that minimizes intersections with car traffic. And stoplights that have a separate right-of-way which allows bikes to go when no cars are allowed to go. Fixing that will mean that more people feel comfortable riding a bike for trips within a couple miles. And more people riding their bikes for short trips mean that drivers have more empathy for bikers, etc. And it means that more people advocate for allowing denser zoning near them since they get the benefit of more amenities.

It’s a virtuous cycle that starts with making lots of safe infrastructure, so safe that even grandma and young children are able to bike safely.

[kube-system]

If someone's house is 20+ miles from their office, that might be an urban planning issue, but it isn't a road design issue.

[bobbylarrybobby]

No, because it is not “natural” to have to drive long distances — this was a deliberate choice by the US. The goal is not to get people to drive long distances and then make sure they don't start dying too much more than if they had walked instead. Rather, by removing the need to drive, other countries have reduced their traffic fatalities per capita, which was the goal all along.