Source of the chart - Plane vs. car safety: America has the world's safest air travel but is so bad at car safety - Vox
Three tweet thread...
A key reason is Americans love BIG HEAVY vehicles. "The average weight of a new vehicle sold in the United States last year was a whopping 4,329 pounds." You get hit by one of these monsters as a pedestrian, cyclist, you die.
That was my first thought too. I reckon maybe we have fewer death machine pickups, but nope, Ford F series and other chudmobiles also happen to be the top selling vehicles here too
I would hunch it may have something to do with a generally less aggressive population, more respect for speed limits, probably more reasonable speed limits overall, but I'm just spit-balling here because the USA fatality rate is almost three times higher. What the fuck? That is a massive difference.
I asked ChatGPT and it gave a little more context, but I'm not quite satisfied with that lacklustre explanation tbh.
I think it has to do with the percent of the population that has access to good (and well used) rapid transit. 30% of the Canadian population lives in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver, all with decent transit by NA standards. In the US I suspect it’s much lower.