“U.S. traffic fatalities in the first quarter of 2025 were 6.3 percent lower than in the first quarter of 2024,” reports The Doomslayer.
A month ago, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released new data showing
a notable decrease in people killed in crashes in the first three months of 2025…traffic fatalities declined about 6.3% in the first quarter, with 8,055 lives lost….the estimated quarterly fatality rate is the lowest in six years….fatalities decreased in 33 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
The fatality rate for the first quarter decreased to 1.05 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, down from the rate of 1.13 from the same time in 2024. This is the lowest quarterly fatality rate since the first quarter of 2019. Vehicle miles traveled in the quarter remained mostly flat at 4.3 billion miles, or about a 0.6% increase.
Road deaths spiked in the U.S. after the death of George Floyd, as police pulled back from police stops of motorists (especially black motorists), leading to big increases in reckless driving and crashes, especially among black motorists.
But in the rest of the world, it was a different story, with a steady fall in road deaths in every year since 2010:
Ten countries succeeded in reducing road traffic deaths by over 50%: Belarus, Brunei Darussalam, Denmark, Japan, Lithuania, Norway, Russian Federation, Trinidad and Tobago, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. Thirty-five more countries made notable progress, reducing deaths by 30% to 50%….28% of global road traffic deaths occurred in the South-East Asia Region, 25% in the Western Pacific Region, 19% in the African Region, 12% in the Region of the Americas, 11% in the Eastern Mediterranean Region and 5% in the European Region.
Nine in 10 deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, and fatalities in these countries are disproportionately higher when set against the number of vehicles and roads they have. The risk of death is 3 times higher in low-income than high-income countries, yet low-income countries have just 1% of the world’s motor vehicles.
Fifty-three per cent of all road traffic fatalities are vulnerable road users including: pedestrians (23%); riders of powered two- and three-wheelers such as motorcycles (21%); cyclists (6%); and users of micro-mobility devices such as e-scooters (3%). Deaths among car and other 4-wheeled light vehicle occupants fell slightly to 30% of global fatalities….
Pedestrian deaths rose 3% to 274,000 between 2010 and 2021, accounting for 23% of global fatalities.
In the U.S., in contrast, the motor vehicle fatality rate went up 7.1% in 2020, and 10.5% in 2021, before falling 0.3% in 2022, according to Wikipedia. There were 3,230 fatalities in 2021, compared to only 2,967 fatalities in 2010. Road deaths increased both as an absolute number and as a fraction of America’s population from 2019 to 2021.
The rise in motor vehicle fatalities was especially sharp for black people, with “motor vehicle fatalities among blacks” soaring “36 percent in June–December 2020 versus the same period in 2019, compared with a 9 percent increase among the rest of the population.” “In the tumultuous first month of the racial reckoning,” that followed George Floyd’s death, “743 black people were killed in traffic fatalities, up from 478 in June 2019, a 55 percent increase.”
As the progressive website Vox noted about the recent increase in U.S. traffic deaths:
According to a 2021 survey of over 1,000 police officers, nearly 60 percent said they were less likely to stop a vehicle for violating traffic laws than they were prior to 2020, when the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police inspired nationwide protests……traffic stops are decreasing while deaths are rising….Some experts…think there’s an obvious link. Enforcement efforts that are high-visibility and focused on safety are shown to reduce risky driving.
