[jacquesm]

That's per million vehicle years not per million miles.

When I read your comment I realized something must be off and went to check the source data. Imagine if the average driver drives 20K miles / year it would take only 50 drivers to get to million miles. If the death rate of cars would even approach 50 deaths per million miles then everybody would stand a good chance of dying in a car accident. Clearly this is not the case.

[dredmorbius]

Thanks for the clarification.

For some stats:

In 2009 there were 10.5 million accidents, and 35,900,000 motor vehicle fatalities. Your odds of dying in any given accident are 0.3%.

In 2013 projections were for 1,203.6 billion vehicle miles travelled. Travel mileage has actually been declining slightly (about 1%/year) since the 2008 depression.

You could expect to travel 33,526,462 without a death, on average.

http://advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/DOT-Miles-Driv... https://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1103....