Source of the chart - Plane vs. car safety: America has the world's safest air travel but is so bad at car safety - Vox
Three tweet thread...
A key reason is Americans love BIG HEAVY vehicles. "The average weight of a new vehicle sold in the United States last year was a whopping 4,329 pounds." You get hit by one of these monsters as a pedestrian, cyclist, you die.
I am flabbergasted by the gap between Canada and the US. Canada is only marginally less carbrained than the US, there must be something really fucked happening with urban planning or enforcement or something for there to be that kind of difference.
That was my first thought too. I reckon maybe we have fewer death machine pickups, but nope, Ford F series and other chudmobiles also happen to be the top selling vehicles here too
I would hunch it may have something to do with a generally less aggressive population, more respect for speed limits, probably more reasonable speed limits overall, but I'm just spit-balling here because the USA fatality rate is almost three times higher. What the fuck? That is a massive difference.
I asked ChatGPT and it gave a little more context, but I'm not quite satisfied with that lacklustre explanation tbh.
I think it has to do with the percent of the population that has access to good (and well used) rapid transit. 30% of the Canadian population lives in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver, all with decent transit by NA standards. In the US I suspect it’s much lower.