[ethanhunt_]

"because American structural design forces everyone to drive two-ton bullets to go anywhere, which inevitably results in lethal wrecks. Compare Denmark's road fatality rate of 3.0 per 100,000 inhabitants versus the US ratio of 11.6 per 100,000."

Check the per-vehicle-km rate. Denmark isn't safer because they drive less.

[scbrg]

Unless I'm reading the table wrong, US is still at 7.6 deaths per billion km, while Denmark is at 3.4. That's more than a 1:2 ratio. I'd certainly say that's safer (even if the difference is smaller than GP indicates).

[Chevalier]

Scbrg beat me to it, but Denmark is still twice as safe as the US when you consider kilometers driven. Keep in mind that this means cars-vs-cars.

And more to the point, take a second to think about what you just said. Denmark is nearly four times as safe as the US because they gave people lovely cities like Copenhagen where kids can safely bike to school and adults can walk to work or to a local restaurant. This means...

...yup, that they don't risk their lives every day in cars and thus the per-vehicle-kilometer rate isn't terribly useful in assessing a walkable lifestyle. The kids that bike to school in Copenhagen don't die in automobile wrecks and aren't exposed to risk on a per-vehicle-kilometer rate. Those dangers are for American kids.

Even when you disregard the safety/quality of daily life for urban Danes and use the car-vs-car per capita per-vehicle-kilometer rate, it's astonishing that Denmark's excellent urban planning has even influenced Danish drivers, in that it's more than twice as safe to drive in Denmark as it is to drive in the US. Contrary to your last statement, Denmark is RADICALLY safer because they drive less. Even drivers are safer because of the superior design of Danish cities and streets.