And that second graph I linked shows it pretty clearly - US traffic deaths are clearly not declining at the rate of everyone else which is why the line crosses over Britain and Sweden in like '93 and Japan and France in 2005. My argument hinges around why. The linked article says exactly what rd95 and goobster want it to say - "because Americans are assholes." I have never not seen that sort of argument be overly-simplistic at best and wrong at worst. The Brits, the French, the Swedes and the Japanese are assholes, too but that's just motive. It's not method, means and opportunity. Newsweek, of course, is happy to oversimplify the issue. If you get a little more rigorous on it you discover that there isn't even a lot of consistency of how many drivers are tested for drunk driving, which skews the accident statistics. Here's what I know: I dated a Serbian girl who every year would make a big road trip to the coast with her family. They'd pack up the car, buy snacks, get the maps out and settle in for a mind-blowing three hour drive. In Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Steig Larssen has his hero travel from Stockholm to the "back of beyond", an island an hour north of Gavle. That makes it two hours by car. here in the United States, you can drive about a thousand miles a day. Two hours? I have friends that commute that to work every day. and back. IF: Driving is inherently dangerous AND: American culture simply involves more driving THEN: it's entirely possible that the reason our death rate is going down less fast than the rest of the world is we're closer to the asymptote. And I don't think it's fair to wave hands and say "it's because Americans are assholes."
I have to admit, part of me also wanted that simple answer. My tiny roadtrip from San Diego to LA and back felt like a long-ass drive. And in that six hours, I got cut off by an asshole in a BMW thrice. But it's not like the rest of the world are saints: the Dutch are known to drive selfishly, rarely making room when you want to merge for example. Germans are nicer but are worse at tailgaiting. What I did find worrisome was that driving in the U.S. and Canada was way easier (in terms of mental energy needed) than I expected. I did not feel like I needed to pay attention as much as I do over here, like once I'm on the right avenue I just have to follow the guy in front of me and not run a red light, even in dense urban areas. It was tempting to check my phone because driving was legitimately more boring than I was used to. My impression is that distracted driving is a much bigger issue over there than here.