(red), per one million people (orange), total annual deaths (light blue), VMT in tens of billions (dark blue) and population in millions (teal), from 1921 to 2017 Road toll figures in
developed nations show that car collision fatalities have declined since 1980. Japan is
an extreme example, with road deaths decreasing to 5,115 in 2008, which was 25% of the 1970 rate per capita and 17% of the 1970 rate per vehicle distance travelled. In 2008, for the first time, more pedestrians than vehicle occupants were killed in Japan by cars. Besides improving general road conditions like lighting and separated walkways, Japan has been installing
intelligent transportation system technology such as stalled-car monitors to avoid crashes. In
developing nations, statistics may be grossly inaccurate or hard to get. Some nations have not significantly reduced the total death rate, which stood at 12,000 in Thailand in 2007, for example. In the United States, twenty-eight states had reductions in the number of automobile crash fatalities between 2005 and 2006. 55% of vehicle occupants 16 years or older in 2006 were not using
seat belts when they crashed. Road fatality trends tend to follow
Smeed's law, an empirical schema that correlates increased fatality rates per capita with
traffic congestion.
Deaths in 2005 the automobile is one of the least safe means of transport, if safety is measured as the fewest fatalities per travelled distance. Based on data by EU-27 member nations, 2008–2010. Crashes are categorized by what is struck and the direction of impact, or impacts. These are some common crash types, based on the total number that occurred in the US in 2005, the percentage of total crashes, and the percentage of fatal crashes: •
Rear impacts (1,824,000 crashes, 29.6% of all US crashes, 5.4% of US fatal crashes) •
Angle or side impacts (1,779,000 crashes, 28.9% of all US crashes, 20.7% of US fatal crashes) •
Run-off-road collisions (992,000 crashes, 16.1% of US crashes, 31.7% of US fatal crashes) • Collisions with animals (275,000 crashes, 4.5% of US crashes, 0.4% of fatal crashes) •
Rollovers (141,000 crashes, 2.3% of all US crashes, 10.9% of US fatal crashes) •
Head-on collision (123,000 crashes, only 2.0% of all US crashes, but 10.1% of US fatal crashes) • Collisions with pedestrians and bicyclists (114,000 crashes, only 1.8% of US crashes, but 13.5% of US fatal crashes) •
Back-up collisions killed 221 people in the US in 2007, and injured about 14,400. This is one of the most common types of non-traffic auto collision in which road workers and children 15 and younger are killed. Rollover, head-on, pedestrian, and bicyclist crashes combined are only 6.1% of all crashes, but cause 34.5% of traffic-related fatalities. Sometimes the vehicles in the collision can suffer more than one type of impact, such as during a shunt or high-speed spin. This is called a "second harmful event," such as when a vehicle is redirected by the first crash into another vehicle or fixed object. Representation of regional death statistics on map reveals significant differences even between neighboring regions. Source
IRTAD for the following data: • Number of vehicles: 2005 except Ireland 2003; Luxembourg 2004; Slovakia 2002. • Length of the network: 2005 except Hungary and Luxembourg 2004; Germany and Denmark 2003; Slovakia 2002; Iceland 2000; Ireland 2001; Netherlands 1999; Greece and United Kingdom 1998; Portugal 1993; Italy 1992. • Distance in Kilometres: 2005 except Denmark 2004; Italy and Netherlands 2003; Ireland 2001; Iceland and Slovakia 2000; United Kingdom and Greece 1998. • Population: source IRTAD except for Ireland, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Sweden, Iceland and Norway: source INED. ==Deaths==