How America’s Staggering Traffic Death Rate Became Matter-of-Fact

By Angie Schmitt, Streets Blog

How did more than 30,000 annual motor vehicle deaths become something that most Americans accept as normal? A new paper by Boston University professor Itai Vardi tries to answer that question.
...

1. Thinking of traffic deaths in terms of fatalities per mile driven
[B' Spokes: Here in Maryland we have a high per capita traffic fatality rate but since when also drive more than average to do the same daily activities our fatalities per mile are average as reported by MDOT. But read the article for more info.
...

2. “Saving Lives”
[B' Spokes: I'll add my two cents, over the past 10 years or so when driving milage was way less than predicted federal agencies (and locally) essentially claimed the lives saved by less driving was because of their intervention (which basically came down to efforts to encourage people to drive more.) Finding success in anything I guess. :/]
...

3. Seatbelts and Drunk Driving
[B' Spokes: This may be the most important bit, my take is rather than take responsibility for failed road design the blame was passed to a few errant drivers.]
...

http://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/09/14/how-americas-staggering-traffic-death-rate-became-matter-of-fact/