In the last ten years, Finland reduced road deaths by a sizable 29% due to measures like lowering speed and implementing infrastructural improvements and speed cameras.
These are relative improvement numbers. Red means “less than 12% reduction”. They’re not total traffic deaths in any way.
It’s also really hard to compare absolute traffic death numbers. Deaths per kilometer are influenced by country density, etc. Deaths per vehicle are skewed by multi-vehicle ownership. Deaths per person are skewed by trip length. Deaths per trip are basically unmeasured in most places.
Ideally, you’ll want to compare specific details in depth. For example: 91 cyclists died in the UK and 684 died in the Netherlands, but those numbers are meaningless if you don’t know the distance travelled and the cause of the accident. The vast majority of Dutch cycling deaths (and a very large fraction of all traffic deaths) are old people in “single-sided accidents”, for example, something that almost never happens in the UK. Does that mean the bike paths in the UK are super safe, or does it mean grandma never goes grocery shopping by bike?
Similarly, this article points out that traffic deaths per person didn’t decrease much since 2022. I’d say that’s a huge win, since the number of kilometers travelled went up hugely since a little something called covid restrictions.
These are relative improvement numbers. Red means “less than 12% reduction”. They’re not total traffic deaths in any way.
It’s also really hard to compare absolute traffic death numbers. Deaths per kilometer are influenced by country density, etc. Deaths per vehicle are skewed by multi-vehicle ownership. Deaths per person are skewed by trip length. Deaths per trip are basically unmeasured in most places.
Ideally, you’ll want to compare specific details in depth. For example: 91 cyclists died in the UK and 684 died in the Netherlands, but those numbers are meaningless if you don’t know the distance travelled and the cause of the accident. The vast majority of Dutch cycling deaths (and a very large fraction of all traffic deaths) are old people in “single-sided accidents”, for example, something that almost never happens in the UK. Does that mean the bike paths in the UK are super safe, or does it mean grandma never goes grocery shopping by bike?
Similarly, this article points out that traffic deaths per person didn’t decrease much since 2022. I’d say that’s a huge win, since the number of kilometers travelled went up hugely since a little something called covid restrictions.