Study: U.S. could avert thousands of traffic deaths with tougher enforcement
By Ashley Halsey III - Washington Post Staff Writer
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The United States is far behind other developed countries when it comes to pursuing strategies that reduce traffic fatalities. Since 1995, France has cut deaths by 52 percent, Great Britain by 38 percent and Australia by 25 percent. In the United States, they've dropped by 19 percent.
"The lack of progress in reducing the highway casualty toll might suggest that Americans have resigned themselves to this burden of deaths and injuries as the inevitable consequence of the mobility provided by the road system," the report says. "In other countries, public officials . . . have declared that this human and economic cost is neither inevitable or acceptable."
The number of traffic fatalities in the United States last year - 33,808 - was the lowest since 1949, but other countries saw far more significant drops. If the United States had made the same progress in reducing deaths as Britain did between 1997 and 2008, 29,000 more Americans would still be alive.
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