What you know makes a big difference in your survival. Today’s topic deals with how to increase your odds of surviving car collisions on multi-lane roads. Specifically, my goal is to answer the question of which lane is the safest when you can choose between an outer and an inner lane, or an outer, center, and inner lane (or more) on larger roads.
Which lane is safest in city driving or at city (<30 mph) speeds?
At city speeds (i.e., up to 30 mph), you’re nearly guaranteed to survive both head-on and side impact collisions with minimal injury, presuming you’re in a vehicle with good crash scores and frontal and side airbags. However, I’d recommend driving in the outermost lane (that closest to the shoulder) as much as possible, as this reduces the risks of head-on collisions with vehicles that may be speeding or that may have considerable more mass (e.g., school buses).
Which lane is safest on undivided high sped roads (e.g., 55 mph roads)?
Undivided high speed roads (with or without motorcycles) are a bad, bad idea.
Undivided high speed (i.e., above 45 mph) roads are the most dangerous kinds of roads frequently found in the United States; they have the highest fatality rates because they are diametric to best practices. Hurling two vehicles at each other and expecting them to pass each other with inches to spare without any kind of barrier whatsoever would sound like a bad idea to anyone in theory, yet this is precisely what these roads are in practice. Best practices indicate avoiding such roads if they have speed limits above 43 mph. Because speed limits in the US are based in 5 mph increments, this means avoiding undivided roads with speed limits above 40 mph whenever possible, especially if there’s only one available lane in each direction.
If you need to drive on such a road, do your best to drive at or below 43 mph. And if you have multiple lanes to choose from, choose the outermost one. This won’t keep you from getting into a head-on collision by a distracted or inebriated driver who drifts into your lane, but it might give you vital seconds to slow down or steer out of the way, and sometimes, that’s all it takes to make the difference between life and death.
Which lane is safest on divided high speed roads (e.g., interstates)?
On divided (protected) roads, the biggest danger–that of oncoming traffic–is ideally eliminated or at least severely reduced. However, I still recommend the outermost lane because it’s the lane that will allow you to reach the shoulder most easily if you have vehicle trouble or if you need to avoid a vehicle traveling dangerously (e.g., speeding, swerving, etc) behind you. Such vehicles are additionally more likely to be using the innermost lanes, since those are the higher speed and passing lanes. Using the outermost lane reduces your risks of getting mixed up in things you want to stay away from.
Why do you recommend the outermost lane over the center lane?
I recommend the outermost lane in nearly every situation over the center or innermost lanes because the outermost lane is most likely to be the slowest lanes, and as discussed above, slow is safer. Additionally, if you’re unlucky enough to get bumped by a vehicle passing you while in the center lane, that can send you into a lane on your right or a lane on your left; neither of which is a desirable situation. When you’re in the outermost lane, the road works with you as a natural barrier and you also can make a much quicker exit in an emergency situation.
But doesn’t the outer lane place you at greater risk for side impacts?
No. Studies have shown that the risk of a side impact is roughly equal on both sides of a vehicle, and I also think the risk of side impacts are roughly equal no matter which lane you’re in. However, what’s certain is that if you’re hit while on an undivided road, there’s a 50-50 chance that the impact will send you toward or into oncoming traffic. The farther you are from that oncoming traffic (by being in the outermost lane), the lower your odds are of suffering a second severe impact.
In conclusion, while there are a lot of circumstances we have little to no control over when driving (e.g., 50% of auto fatalities among vehicles involve multiple vehicles), there are a great many we can influence by when and how we drive. Learn and live best practices. The life you save may not just be your own, but those of many you love (and many loved by others).
The Hyundai Tuscon is the only vehicle tested with a “good” passenger-side small overlap score
Vehicles in the US today are, on average, safer than they have ever been. I’ve written about the best kinds of vehicles for avoiding and surviving some of the most dangerous kinds of crashes, including rollovers and side impact collisions, and will continue to do so. However, there is still much work to be done in car safety, and in the safety of all travelers. Today’s post focuses on the passenger component of the small impact collision. More and more new vehicles on the market are acing the IIHS’ small overlap test, which impacts the front left quarter of the vehicle. However, the IIHS recently ran the same test on the right quarter of a number of small SUVs and found that nearly all of them performed worse there than they did on the left, traditionally tested end, where all were rated “good.”
What does this mean for your family?
It means that if you’re unlucky enough to get into a passenger-side small overlap collision, your passenger might far significantly worse than you’d expect given the severity of the crash and the “official” (driver’s side) small overlap score of your vehicle. It means your spouse, partner, teenager, adult child, or other loved one might not be as protected as s/he should be because your vehicle’s manufacturer cut corners, knowing that part of the vehicle would not be subject to IIHS or NHTSA testing.
This is serious. But how serious is it, in terms of relative risk compared to other collisions?
How many annual right small overlap passenger fatalities occur in the US?
The IIHS stated more than 1,600 right-front passenger fatalities occurred from frontal crashes in 2014. They did not distinguish between crashes that occurred from direct (head-on) frontal crashes, passenger-side moderate overlap frontal crashes, and passenger-side small overlap frontal crashes, however, not to mention driver-side moderate overlap or small overlap crashes that still resulted in front passenger fatalities, so this figure is not particularly useful, especially since they also note that 32,675 people died overall in 2014 due to vehicular collisions.
Digging into the numbers further, the IIHS also states that 65% of the 32,675 motor vehicle deaths that year involved occupants of motor vehicles, or 21,102. Of those 21,102 individuals, 27% were passengers, which suggests approximately 5,698 passengers died in motor vehicles that year. If 1,600 of those passengers sat in the right front seat, it suggests at least 28%, or more than 1/4th of passenger fatalities occur in that seat. However, we still are left without an answer regarding the number of individuals who lost their lives while riding as front-right passengers in passenger-side small overlap collisions.
We don’t know how much of a risk this is. But if it’s easy to prevent some portion of those 1,600 deaths, it’s worth looking into.
Which small SUVs were involved, and how did they score? Let’s take a closer look.
The IIHS looked at a total of 7 small SUVs. I recently named four of these as the best in their class for rollover resistance (the Mazda CX-5, Hyundai Tucson, Honda CR-V, and Toyota RAV4). All had recent “good” driver-side ratings in the IIHS small overlap test, but when tested on the passenger-side, only one, the Hyundai Tucson, also featured a good passenger small overlap rating. Three, the Encore, CR-V, and CX-5, featured “acceptable” scores; two, the Rogue and Forester, featured “marginal” scores; and one, the RAV4, featured a “poor” score.
The 2016 Tucson was the only vehicle the IIHS tested to feature a “good” small overlap score on the passenger side in addition to on the driver’s side. The Tucson was also one of the best small SUVs I found for all-around rollover protection. In light of its performance in this particular test, I have no issues describing it as the safest small SUV currently on the market.
My full 3 across car seat guide to the current Tucson is here.
The Encore, which is the same vehicle as the Chevrolet Trax, was one of three vehicles to receive a good driver-side small overlap score but only an acceptable passenger-side equivalent score. While the IIHS only tested the 2015 Encore, I would also extend my rating to the 2016 Encore, as it has not had any significant changes in its structural design in the past year.
My full 3 across car seat guide to the Encore is here.
The current generation CR-V was described as having a symmetrical front undercarriage structure, and besides gaining an acceptable score for passenger-side small overlap protection, it also got a good score for an additional passenger-side moderate overlap test, which the IIHS found reassuring. Although the IIHS only looked at the 2015 CR-V, I’m extending my rating to the 2012-2016 years, as the last significant change to the CR-V occurred in 2012.
My full 3 across car seat guide to the CR-V is here.
Like the CR-V, the CX-5 also had a good driver-side small overlap score but only an acceptable one on the provision passenger-side test, indicating Mazda, like Honda, has work to do in this area. The CX-5 was the highest-rated small SUV in my list of rollover-resistant vehicles.
My full 3 across car seat guide to the CX-5 is here.
The Rogue already has the dubious distinction of being one of the few small SUVs that is currently 3 across incompatible due to overlapping seat belts, and on top of that, was also one of the worst performing SUVs tested by the IIHS in its provisional passenger-side small overlap screener. The IIHS noted that the Rogue appeared symmetrical when inspected, but had much more intrusion on the passenger end than they did on the driver’s end. Specifically, the IIHS stated there were 10 more inches of intrusion on the passenger-side compared to the driver-side in the Rogue, and that the door hinge pillar was completely torn off.
My explanation of car seat challenges related to the Rogue is here.
Like the Rogue, the Forester also had a disappointing performance in the passenger-side small overlap test, which is surprising given Subaru’s recent touting of the safety of their vehicles. Ideally, they’ll correct this, and soon. The IIHS noted that the Forester, like every SUV on the list besides the Rogue and RAV4, appeared symmetrical when inspected, but had much more intrusion on the passenger end than it did on the driver’s end.
The only small SUV to score poorly in this preliminary passenger-side small overlap test was the RAV4. The IIHS noted that the RAV4 was one of only two asymmetrically structured vehicles they tested (the other being the Rogue), and was the worst performing vehicle on the list with the greatest amount of passenger-side intrusion. In particular, there were 13 more inches of intrusion on the passenger-side when tested than on the driver-side. Additionally, the passenger door opened during the collision, which would have placed the passenger at a much higher risk of ejection from the vehicle. This is completely unacceptable, and Toyota needs to work on this immediately.
How do I keep my passengers safe if I don’t drive one of the “good” or “acceptable” vehicles on this list?
This is a great question. As of today, the IIHS has only released passenger-side small overlap crash test information for 7 small SUVs, which represents a small fraction of currently available vehicles. My advice for families who don’t drive one of the 4 vehicles rated “good” or “acceptable” on this list would be to stick with the basics of driving safely. In particular, making sure every occupant is buckled on every drive, only driving with a 0.00% BAC, and driving the speed limit every single time will make your occupants safer than those of 90% of vehicle occupants on the road.
Will the IIHS begin to test all vehicles for passenger-side small overlap performance?
Yes! The IIHS suggested a ratings program for passenger-side small overlap tests would resolve the tendencies of manufacturers to cut corners on passenger-side small overlap performance. They hinted at starting a testing program in 2017, and making good or acceptable performance on such a test a requirement for a safety award as soon as in 2018, two years away. Whether they will do this remains to be seen, but I’d rate the likelihood as high, given the IIHS’ penchant for devising new testing programs and continually raising the bar for their Top Safety Pick awards.
This mother and child have as much of a right to life as do the travelers in the protected vehicles around them. But their odds of survival drop dramatically if the vehicles around them travel faster than 20 mph.
I’ve written about Vision Zero before in the context of Volvo, which made a pledge some years ago to have none of their customers die or be seriously injured by the year 2020. Whether or not they achieve this goal, the core value behind the Vision Zero approach (approved in Sweden in 1997 and brought to a growing number of additional countries, including the US) is that the death and destruction caused by the automobile does not have to be a given, and that we can, should, and must work to reduce the negative impact of the automobile on human life.
I fully agree with this goal, and it’s a guiding principle behind the articles I write on this blog. Yes, it’s great to get safer vehicles, but we also need to remember that the greater goal must involve the protection of all citizens, including those who don’t have access to the safest vehicles due to financial reasons, such as the poor and elderly, or those who can’t or use cars, trucks, and SUVs at all, like cyclists, motorcyclists, children, and pedestrians.
Is Vision Zero Working, and who should we learn from?
It’s worth noting that Sweden has improved their road safety to the point of becoming one of the global leaders in the minimization of deaths and serious injuries. In 1997, their per capita auto death rate was approximately 7 per 100,000; today, they’re among the top nations on the planet with a rate of 2.8/100,000 in 2014. The US, in comparison, had a death rate of 10.2/100,000 in 2014.
Vision Zero is working in Sweden, as well as in other countries around the world that have taken meaningful and consistent steps to adopt it (e.g., Norway, which also had a 2.8 per capita rate in 2014). It has not shown as much success in nations unwilling to fundamentally alter their principles in road design. It’s worth looking into some of the central tenets of the approach from people who work with it on a daily basis.
With this in mind, here’s an excerpt from a 2014 interview with Matts-Ake Belin, a traffic safety strategist in the Swedish Transport Administration. He’s one of the main figures behind VZ, and here’s what his team has found about the human body’s capacities to absorb injury. Much of this will ring true with policies I advocate on the blog.
What speeds make crashes unsurvivable in and out of vehicles?
…in Vision Zero, the accident is not the major problem. The problem is that people get killed or seriously injured. And the reason that people get serious injuries is mainly because people have a certain threshold where we can tolerate external violence, kinetic energy. And we know quite well now how much violence we can tolerate.
Right off the bat, Belin brings good information. Just as there is a limit to the number of individuals our planet can support, there is a limit to the amount of force the human body can manage. The VZ folks call it “external violence”, but whatever the terminology, the point remains the same: we can only absorb so much energy.
I’ve written about this endlessly in the context of frontal and side collisions in vehicles, as well as in reasons to rear-face instead of forward-face. When you rear-face a child, the energy in a collision is primarily distributed throughout the child’s back, which has a much larger surface area, mass, and ability to absorb shock than solely the child’s head and neck, which are charged with absorbing that same shock in a frontal collision.
In the context of crashes, I’ve repeatedly found that once the forces in a head-on or side collision exceed about 200% of the forces the vehicle was designed to support (i.e., the forces it withstood in a crash test where it received a “good” score), survival rates seem to drop rapidly from close to 100% to much, much lower odds (I’d estimate 67% at 200% of tested forces). At 300% of crash-tested forces, I’d estimate survival odds tentatively at around 33%. These aren’t good odds. And remember that the IIHS tests head-on and side-impact collisions at 40 and 31 mph, respectively. If you’re involved in a head-on collision at 70 mph, you’re already at 306% of the forces your vehicle was designed to keep you alive in. The odds are pretty strong that anyone in the front row is going to die. Similarly, if you’re t-boned at 55 mph, you’re already at 315% of the forces your vehicle was designed to keep you alive in. Once again, anyone on the impacted side of the vehicle is probably going to die.
One of the major things with Vision Zero now is to put that more explicitly on the table. It’s like if we’re talking about the environment, and you know you have a certain threshold when it comes to poison, or whatever. You can tolerate up to a certain level. So it’s not just to stop the traffic. You can actually allow traffic. But if you have places in your system where you have unprotected road users and protected road users, according to Vision Zero you can’t allow a higher speed than 30 kilometers per hour [18.6 mph].
Belin here underscores the logic behind the “20 is plenty” campaigns throughout Europe that are slowly (very slowly) making their way to the US. Actually, we’ve had an equivalent policy for decades in the US–it’s the reason why school zones throughout the country have 20 mph speed limits when children are present. The problem is that pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, and children don’t get any of this protection unless they happen to be moving through school zones while children (and perhaps police) are present. But the physics doesn’t change. If you’re an unprotected road user (which basically means anyone who isn’t in a vehicle with a steel frame, closed doors, crash scores, seat belts, and front and side airbags), you can’t mix with protected road users (anyone in a car, truck, SUV, minivan, etc) at more than 20 mph, or else your odds of death in a collision rise rapidly.
This is huge. But what do our odds look like if we’re in protected vehicles? Let’s turn to a study done by Monash University in 1999:
As you can see, this is where Belin got his numbers from. If pedestrians meet cars, traffic can’t move beyond 30 kph (18.6 mph). It just can’t.
If individuals are in cars and wearing seat belts on roads with risks of side impacts, traffic can’t move beyond 50 kph, or 31 mph. This, not-coincidentally, is the typical speed in residential areas in the US. However, it’s frequently exceeded by drivers, and it’s already far in the danger zone for the kinds of individuals who are and should be everywhere in residential areas (pedestrians, children, cyclists, etc). Also note how that is exactly the threshold at which the IIHS tests side impact collisions.
If everyone is buckled in and in protected vehicles and there isn’t a risk of side impacts, the limit for frontal impacts is described as 70 kph, or 43.4 mph. Note again how this is right about where the IIHS tests its moderate- and small-overlap crashes.
Finally, if there isn’t a risk of side or frontal impacts due to barriers between opposing route traffic, the top speeds for well-designed vehicles and restrained passengers can exceed 100 kph, or 62 mph. However, this again requires the impossibility of head-on or side-collisions. When restrained in well-designed vehicles, we can handle collisions with forgiving barriers at high speeds. We can’t handle those collisions or speeds when interacting with other vehicles in head-on collisions. We’re even more vulnerable to side collisions. We’re at our most vulnerable when we aren’t in protected vehicles at all.
Best practices in survivability thresholds have been open knowledge for decades. But it won’t help us until we start designing our roads with this knowledge in mind.
We are all worth protecting, regardless of how we move.
They’re not out to get you. They’re out to make the roads safer for everyone.
If you’re like most drivers in the United States, you probably have a negative opinion of red light cameras, especially those close to where you drive. Sure, on the surface, the idea of cameras to catch people running red lights might not sound like a good idea, but everyone really knows they’re just around to catch people and give tickets, right?
Not at all. The truth is that red light camera programs are actually quite effective in reducing instances of red light running, as well as fatal crashes resulting from red light running. But how much of an issue is this? How many people are actually dying, how effective are the cameras, and how do we keep our loved ones safe in a political climate where people and legislators are opposed to technology that makes us safer? Let’s take a look together below.
How many people die or are injured from red light running crashes?
Per FARS data, in 2014, 709 people died from crashes involving red light running, while an estimated 126,000 were injured. Given that there were 32,675 deaths overall, the 709 made up a small (2%) fraction, but still a needlessly large one. One out of every 50 traffic deaths resulted from individuals attempting to cross an intersection when the light system indicated they no longer had the right of way.
Do the red light runners die more often, or the people they hit?
Sadly, the primary victims of red light runners are rarely the runners themselves; per the IIHS, the majority of victims are either people occupying the vehicles impacted by the vehicle without the right of way, passengers in the vehicle without the right of way, pedestrians, or cyclists.
Do red light cameras actually reduce red light running and fatalities?
Yes! When enforcement is automated, drivers are less likely to run lights. This is more effective than traditional police enforcement, since it occurs 24 hours a day without the need for officers at given intersections. Cameras also serve as greater forms of deterrence when made public, and also have much better “vision” than manual methods, since they’re always at their intersections. Per the IIHS, red light running fatalities decreased by 21% in cities with activated cameras compared while all kinds of fatal crashes at intersections with signals decreased by 14%. The general decrease at signalized intersections was hypothesized to greater overall caution by drivers cognizant of the presence of cameras in other areas of town.
What happens when red light cameras are removed?
In contrast, when red light cameras were turned off in cities, rates of red light running fatalities increased by 30% while all signalized intersection fatalities increased by 16%. To put it simply, when cameras are removed, drivers revert to old, unsafe, and potentially deadly habits. Cameras make the roads safer for everyone. But opposition to them makes the roads more dangerous for all of us.
What can I do to keep my family safe from red light runners?
Unfortunately, there’s very little you can do to protect your loved ones from red light runners at an individual level, as this is another one of the many societal problems that needs societal solutions. Just as we can’t fully inoculate ourselves from the effects of drunk drivers or speeders, there’s only so much we can do individually to keep our loved ones alive in a driving culture where driving isn’t taken seriously.
To keep people safe in general from red light runners, we need to reduce a culture of disregard for safety and increase a culture of respect for the road. Ideally, this might be achieved by educating people of all ages of the advantages of following traffic laws, but practically, we’re most likely to stop red light running when the vast majority of vehicles on the road are autonomously controlled. I’ll discuss this below before providing individual solutions.
Why would autonomous cars eliminate red light running fatalities?
The reason autonomous cars are the technological solution most likely to eliminate fatalities from running red lights is because self-driven vehicles (truly self-driven ones, not Teslas on “Autopilot”) don’t run red lights. They’re programmed to behave like regular drivers to varying degrees, but they’re also programmed to avoid breaking blatant traffic laws, unlike human drivers. As with vaccines, however, for full effectiveness, you need the vast majority of individuals (in this case, vehicles) in a population to be inoculated (or in this case, self-driven).
Even before reaching a critical mass of autonomous vehicles where enough people began to use them to make their adoption inevitable, you’d still be much safer in a self-driving car at a red light intersection than in a regular one, as an autonomous car would have an array of camera, radar, and laser systems to help detect and avoid perpendicular traffic at intersections.
Until self-driving vehicles are available, what can I do for my family’s safety on an individual level?
My general suggestions for reducing your loved ones’ odds of injury or death in traffic collisions are closely tied to my specific suggestions for avoiding red light collisions. The best solution is to avoid driving entirely; since self-driving vehicles aren’t currently on the market and will likely not be for at least some years to come, I’d recommend using public transportation (i.e., buses and trains) as much as possible. Due to their sizes, both kinds of vehicles are essentially immune to red-light runners, and your odds of survival without death or serious injury are much higher in buses and trains.
If you can’t use public transportation, which is the case with many in the US, my next suggestion would be to exercise extreme caution whenever entering an intersection that has recently turned “green.” Having the right of way doesn’t immunize us from the possibility of being broadsided by inattentive or negligent drivers, and taking a second or two to survey the intersection you’re about to cross on a fresh green life could save your life.
Finally, I’d recommend making sure that whatever you’re driving is equipped with side airbags with head and torso protection at a minimum if a driver, and at least head protection for rear passengers. Ideally, the vehicle should also feature a “good” side impact score from the IIHS. This doesn’t guarantee you’ll survive a red light collision if you’re unlucky enough to be involved in one, but it does significantly increase your odds of doing so, especially if you’re impacted by a vehicle weighing around 3,300 lbs or less (e.g., a mid-sized car or small SUV) and traveling at 31 mph or less, as this is exactly the kind of crash the IIHS’ side impact test is designed to simulate. My side impact resistance guides for small cars, cars overall, SUVs, small SUVs, and minivans address the leading vehicles in impact resistance.
What about rear-facing vs forward-facing? Does that impact red light running crash safety for kids?
Absolutely! A red light running crash is almost always a side impact collision, or a t-bone, and, as with almost every crash situation, it’s safer to be rear-facing during one than it is to be forward-facing, as the forward momentum of your vehicle will drive a child further into a rear-facing car seat (as opposed to directly out of a forward-facing car seat), giving the sides of the seat a much greater chance to protect the child from the forces (and potentially the intrusion) of the impacting vehicle. Once again, rear-face to the limits. The Fllo, Foonf, Rainier, Pacifica, and Extend2Fit make it easy to reach 5 year or 50 pounds before forward-facing.
If you live in New York, you live in one of the safest states in the country, traffic-wise, with a per capita death rate half the national average.
When it comes to road safety in the United States, not all states are created equally. While the overall death rate per capita from motor vehicle crashes in the US is approximately 10.2deaths per 100,000 people (in 2014), the death rates per capita from one state to the next can vary significantly.
While the death rate per capita isn’t a perfect measure of driving risk, it is the most common way of comparing the risk of being killed by auto traffic from one place to the next, and it’s the best general way of judging one’s risk of death by traffic as an average citizen in a given area. With that in mind, which states are the safest, which are the most dangerous, and how do they compare to foreign countries with similar populations?
The most dangerous state for drivers per capita in 2014
Wyoming won the dubious distinction in 2014 of being the state with the highest death rate per capita in the US, with a fatality rate of 25.7 individuals per 100,000. With a population of 584,153 people, that translated to 150 deaths. In comparison, in 2014, Iceland, with a population of 329,100 people, experienced its best year since 1939 with 4 deaths, or a fatality rate of 1.22 per 100,000. Both countries have a nearly identical population density, with 6 people / sq. mile in Wyoming and 8.3 / sq. mi. in Iceland. People are spread out about the same way, and there are a similar number of people…but the people are dying in one patch of land, and living in the other.
If you lived in Iceland in 2014, you’d have been 21x less likely to die from a road crash than if you’d lived in Wyoming.
What a difference! This is a nation with a similar population size to that of a local state, yet one where the average citizen was 21 times less likely to die by auto. Had Wyoming rate been as low as Iceland’s in 2014, only 5 individuals would have died instead of 150.
That’s huge.
In comparison, with a road fatality rate of 25.7 per 100,000 individuals, Wyoming was as unsafe as a number of nations most people in the United States would think they had nothing in common with, like South Africa (25.1), Ethiopia (25.3), Somalia (25.4), and Mali (25.6), per the WHO.
Here’s what an Icelandic official had to say about this figure:
“Our goal is naturally that no one dies in traffic and four fatal accidents are four too many,” said Ágúst Mogensen, chief of investigation of traffic accidents at the Icelandic Transportation Safety Board.
Even so, one can point out this achievement in traffic safety and hopefully, we will experience a year when there are no fatal accidents,” he concluded.
It sounds a lot like what a Norwegian official said about their country’s progress last year when they experienced one of their lowest road fatality rates in history. However, you’d be hard pressed to find a similar statement from officials in Wyoming, unfortunately, and not just because Wyoming came in last.
Year after year, there’s a much greater acceptance of road fatalities in the US compared to prevailing attitudes in many of our fellow wealthy countries, and it’s related to the relentless inevitability of the automobile. There aren’t really any other options to driving throughout large parts of the country, and the auto is associated with our national identity to a much greater degree than is the case in many of our fellow wealthy nations.
What if Iceland just got lucky in 2014?
That’s a great question! Maybe the 1.22 road fatality rate was a fluke. The following year, Iceland would experience many more road fatalities, putting this theory to the test. However, while the Icelandic rate jumped significantly..it still remained far, far better than the Wyoming rate. In 2015, Iceland had an estimated population of 329,425 people, and suffered 16 fatalities, a figure fourfold higher than that in 2014. However, this still led to a much better road fatality rate at 4.86 per 100,000.
How good is a bad year in Iceland (it was their worst year since 2009, where they experienced 17 deaths) compared to a good year for a US state? Let’s take a look at the safest states per capita in 2014 and find out.
The safest states for drivers per capita in 2014
Not counting the District of Columbia, which is, for all intents and purposes, a city and not a state, the states with the lowest death rate per capita in 2014 were Massachusetts and Rhode Island, both of which had road fatality rates of 4.9, or less than half of the overall US road fatality rate of 10.2.
Citizens in Mass. and Rhode Island were as safe as those in Finland when it came to risks of dying from road crashes.
You’ll note that 4.9 is essentially the same road fatality rate as that experienced by Iceland last year (2015), which was not a particularly good year at all for Iceland. That aside, it’s something to be proud of; the safest states in the US, in terms of the average person’s risk of dying via auto trauma, were as safe as one of the safest countries on the planet. Massachusetts had a population of 6,745,408, and suffered 328 deaths. Rhode Island, with a much smaller population of 1,055,173, suffered 52 deaths. New York was barely edged out in 3rd place, with a population of 19,746,227, a road fatality rate of 5.3 per 100,000, and 1,039 deaths.
To put things another way, your odds of dying from a road crash in Mass. and Rhode Island in 2014 were equivalent to your odds of dying from a road crash in Finland in 2013; the population was roughly 5,375,000 while there were 258 deaths, producing a rate of 4.8, per the International Transport Forum, which compares 38 nations annually for road safety trends.
What the numbers tell us is that there are places in the US where your risks of dying from auto traffic are as low as they are in some of the safest areas overseas. There are safer European nations than Iceland and Finland; in 2013, Sweden, the UK, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Israel, Spain, and Norway all had road fatality rates beneath 4 per 100,000. However, even if the best US states weren’t fully comparable to the safest countries per capita, they came close. Unfortunately, there were also lots of states that did very, very poorly. As noted, Wyoming was no safer than Somalia for drivers; there were plenty of other states that also had surprising equivalents across the globe in terms of road safety.
On a positive note, there were a number of states that were safer than the US average of 10.2 in 2014: Alaska (9.9), California (7.9), Colorado (9.1), Connecticut (6.9), Hawaii (6.7), Illinois (7.2), Maine (9.8), Maryland (7.4), Massachusetts and Rhode Island (4.9), Michigan (9.1), Minnesota (6.6), New Hampshire (7.2), New Jersey (6.2), New York (5.3), Ohio (8.7), Oregon (9), Pennsylvania (9.3), Utah (8.7), Vermont (7.0), Virginia (8.4), Washington (6.5), and Wisconsin (8.8).
That said, we have much work to do.
What do I do to keep my family safe (whether when driving, walking, or cycling) if we live in an unsafe state?
This is a great question, and it’s one I frequently get from parents concerned about overall road safety. Keep in mind that the above statistics involve people killed by auto traffic whether or not they were in vehicles themselves. In other words, pedestrians and cyclists also feature into the numbers.
When driving, I typically suggest to stick to the basics of driving safely. In particular, making sure every occupant is buckled on every drive, only driving with a 0.00% BAC, and driving the speed limit every single time will make your occupants safer than those of 90% of vehicle occupants on the road.
I would completely avoid motorcycles and scooters. They offer no more protection than bicycles while traveling at much higher speeds among much heavier and more fortified vehicles. It’s the worst of both worlds.
When navigating roadways as a pedestrian, only cross at crosswalks, look both ways, use sidewalks whenever available (I’d go as far as to recommend avoiding any roadways that don’t feature them), and only walk during the daytime.
I’d recommend cycling only on streets with speed limits of 20 mph or below. For streets with higher speed limits, I’d avoid cycling except on protected (segregated) lanes. Unfortunately, these conditions are very hard to meet in most places in the United States, which makes it hard to recommend cycling in many to most parts of the country. We have a long way to go in our respect toward the most vulnerable members of the road.
35,000 Americans will die this year on the road. You don't have to be one of them. A car seat and car safety blog to promote best practices for families.
2013-2016 Toyota RAV4
