Why are U.S. traffic deaths increasing again?

Dear reader,

After decades of steady reductions in U.S. road fatalities, the number of lethal crashes has been rising in recent years.

As with last week’s newsletter on college applications, this edition dovetails with our interest in the changing experiences of young people, for whom traffic collisions are a leading cause of death.

It turns out that the public has noted the rising danger on the nation’s roads as well. We asked the reporter Alexander Nazaryan to tell us why traffic in the U.S. has been so lethal, and what’s being done about it.

— Matt Thompson

How dangerous are the roads?

In 2024, 39,345 drivers, passengers, pedestrians and cyclists died in crashes caused by motor vehicles in the United States, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. It was the first time that road fatalities fell below 40,000 since 2020, when virtually all travel for both business and pleasure was disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Thanks in part to the advent of airbags and seatbelt laws, driving is much safer today than it was in 1975, but the numbers began trending in the wrong direction about a decade ago. In 2021, there were 42,939 deaths, the highest figure since 2005.

As with gun violence, this is a uniquely American problem not shared by the country’s global peers. In the U.S., the rate of vehicular death is more than four times higher than it is in Britain and Germany and about 1.5 times higher than in Romania, which has the most dangerous roads in the European Union, according to the European Commission.

A study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year found that traffic deaths increased by about 22 percent in the United States between 2013 and 2022. In 27 developed countries, traffic deaths fell by about 19 percent during that same period.

Car accidents are dangerous for everyone involved, but they have become even more hazardous for pedestrians and cyclists. Deaths among these groups have gone up at a “much higher rate than the number of driver and vehicle occupants,” said Laura Sandt, a co-director of the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center.

According to the C.D.C., car accidents are also a leading cause of death for children younger than 13. In a study of nearly 900 crashes in 2021 that had a child under 15 as one of the victims, “some 40% were unrestrained,” according to the traffic safety administration.

Why are more people dying in car wrecks?

According to a Pew poll last year, Americans recognize that there’s a problem. Forty-nine percent said they believed people in their communities were driving either somewhat or much less safely than before the Covid-19 pandemic. They cited speeding, cellphone distractions and aggressive maneuvers as the biggest problems.

Sandt attributes the increase in fatalities to a confluence of factors:

Bigger cars: It’s known as “autobesity.” American consumers are flocking to trucks and sport utility vehicles that are only getting larger. In the last three decades, “the average U.S. passenger vehicle has become about 4 inches wider, 10 inches longer, 8 inches taller and 1,000 pounds heavier,” according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the Highway Loss Data Institute. As a result, researchers there found, forward-facing blind spots increased by as much as 58 percent in some popular S.U.V. models.

Higher speed limits: In 1995, the National Highway System Designation Act lifted the national speed limit of 55 miles per hour, allowing states to set their own speed limits. Today, 41 states have speed limits of 70 m.p.h. or higher in some places, according to the institutes, “and drivers in Texas can legally drive 85 mph on some roads.”

Smartphones: According to the traffic safety administration, 3,275 people were killed in 2023 by distracted driving. Sending a quick text may seem innocuous, but even if it takes only five seconds, the administration points out that at “55 m.p.h., that’s like driving the length of an entire football field with your eyes closed.”

The opioid crisis: As cars were becoming larger and speed limits were increasing, the nation was plunging into an opioid epidemic. A 2023 study found that people with prescriptions for moderate opioid doses were the most likely to be involved in a car accident, relative to other dosages, though all opioid prescriptions were associated with an elevated accident risk.

How have we tried to make roads safer?

Perhaps the most significant effort to address motor vehicle fatalities began in Sweden in 1997 with a program called Vision Zero. With initiatives like lower speed limits, more bike lanes and no right turns on red, the program aimed to eliminate traffic fatalities by reimagining the relationships people and cars have with the built environment. In 2014, New York became the first American city to adopt the approach.

Vision Zero has seen progress, but it remains far from its stated goal of eliminating road fatalities. For example, New York’s numbers have fluctuated since the program began, when there were 259 traffic deaths. Fatalities dropped but then rose to 267 in 2023, before falling again to 205 in 2025, the lowest year on record.

“Vision Zero really forced communities to say, ‘This is not OK. We’re not just going to accept this rise year-over-year as inevitable,’” Sandt said, adding that the initiative’s effect has been limited. Lack of political will and follow-through, especially in the face of community opposition, appear to be frequent issues.

What can I read to learn more?

What if cars are a good idea, but human drivers aren’t? Vox explores the case for self-driving cars.
Commercial aviation and trains are exceptionally safe, so what makes us so ill-suited to cars? Matthew Shaer explored the issue for The New York Times Magazine in 2024 with his article “Why Are American Drivers So Deadly?”
What if we just ditched cars altogether? For that to happen, we would need to reimagine the way we experience cities. Can a car-free community thrive in Phoenix?
In 2023, The Upshot section of The Times closely examined a strange phenomenon around the rise of pedestrian fatalities: Nearly all of the deaths attributed to the increase happened at night.
The magazine Governing explains the success of Vision Zero in Hoboken, N.J. The last time that a traffic fatality happened in the Mile Square City was in early 2017.
For Bloomberg, David Zipper illuminates the importance of how the numbers get crunched. America’s streets seem safer if you analyze how many deaths happen per vehicle mile, he wrote, rather than how many deaths occur per capita.

— Alexander Nazaryan

Your turn

Test your knowledge: Last year, the Transportation Department announced some good news — the government approved a new female crash-test dummy, since cars designed to protect male dummies aren’t necessarily as safe for women. According to government data, how much more likely is a female driver to die in a crash in the U.S. than a male driver?

Tell us what you think: Has your community rolled out any initiatives to reduce traffic deaths locally that you think are effective? What are they, and why do you think they work? Let us know at [email protected].

Following up: Our look at the state of college applications last week prompted many of you, now older adults, to reflect on the role higher education has (and hasn’t!) played in your life. The resounding conclusion from our respondents is that even as degrees have become much more expensive, the experience of college has been cheapened by the notion that it is primarily a conduit to a well-paying career.

“Everyone seems to have lost track of what college is for,” wrote Misha Grifka Wander, who holds a Ph.D.
Another respondent who “never set foot in a college” described retiring comfortably after yearslong stints as a truck driver and a postal worker, showing that a degree hasn’t been a precondition for financial success.
We thought one response was worth quoting at length, from Sally Sherman Taylor, a 1950 graduate of Scripps College in California: “Graduation from college or university was, in truth, the Commencement of a life in which we would be expected to be aware and informed and capable of independent thought and analysis, the ability to listen with care to both sides of any issue and to make a considered judgment,” she wrote. “This was what it was all about; this was what I have carried with me for the rest of my life as I have continued to learn, and this is what I see disappearing today as advanced education ceases to be education and becomes training for a specific employment.”
After graduating, Taylor said, she applied for a job as a secretary to cover living expenses, fearing her double major in French and drama made her unemployable. “The woman behind the desk leaned forward and said: ‘Miss Sherman, if you have completed a four-year course in the Humanities there is NOTHING you cannot learn or do.’ That turned out to be true as I undertook many jobs in many fields and had to learn fast about many different disciplines. I bless the woman who said the words. I still believe them. And wish great good luck to our many young people today.”

The Headway initiative is funded through grants from the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), with Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors serving as a fiscal sponsor. The Woodcock Foundation is a funder of Headway’s public square. Funders have no control over the selection, focus of stories or the editing process and do not review stories before publication. The Times retains full editorial control of the Headway initiative.

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