[_delirium]

I agree that having exactly the same urban design but just replacing the transit modality is likely to produce only a minimal improvement (not to mention being difficult to do, since transit modality and urban layout are interlinked). I think the bigger wins come from shifts in commute patterns. People who take transit typically also take it for fewer miles, making the annual per-person death rates of transit riders considerably lower than the smaller per-mile gap would imply. I think having an urban layout where transit could even work is the big change. But those are pretty deeply tied, e.g. people won't move into denser "transit-oriented development" if there's no good transit to it.

That's the main factor impacting the total number, also. Americans are about 2-3x more likely to die each year while commuting than Germans are, but mostly because they have longer commutes, not because the per-mile safety is worse (though it is slightly worse).