I found traffic death statistics for the EU and US a couple of years ago, and their fatalities are lower than ours with a larger population.
They drive less, and there are other differences. Also they have large vehicles as well even though the average is smaller. You aren't directly measuring "are smaller cars less safe" when you compare European and American traffic fatalities.
Deaths per vehicle million vehicle km are 9.4 in the US, 11.2 in Japan, 8.3 in Norway and Sweden, 7.6 in Finland, 8.8 in Switzerland, 10.9 in France, 11.7 in Austria, 31.7 in the Czech Republic, 10.9 in Ireland, 16.3 in Belgium, 9.7 in Germany, 26.7 in Greece, 46.9 in Slovakia,
driveandstayalive.com
The US is below average here, and that's despite the fact that we have larger families than most of those countries (and so might tend to have more people, and more children who might be more vulnerable in a crash, in a car).
Not only that, the annual number has dropped dramatically in the last 20 years over there.
Its dropped here as well. And if its dropped so dramatically in Europe that only implies that driving there was really dangerous a couple of decades ago. |
