U.S. Traffic Deaths Fall To Lowest Level In 62 Years

So they're not zero per year yet, then?

That's a no brainer. Drop the price of gas (petrol) back down to $1.00USD/gallon and watch the numbers soar back up.

People are moving from new England to the west caost, so higher accident rates must follow. Another no-brainer.

Your tax dollars at work generating self serving statistics to justify their positions and salary.

Just from a quick peek at some numbers, in the US we collectively drive over three times as many miles today as we did in 1960. And yet the total number of traffic fatlities has trended downward. And the trend similarly holds from, say, 2000 to present.

Call it as "self-serving statistics" if you wish, but I credit increasingly better engineering and education as being the primary factors. But regardless of cause, the decrease in lives lost is something we should celebrate rather than dismiss.

stiff DUI fines encourage this also.

Engineering, I'll give you.

Education, never. Drivers Ed is non-existant in schools and if being able to text and drive without killing someone constitutes a better education, I'm going back to the farm.

Have your insurance rates dropped as a result of engineering and education?

actually, actuaries do look at that, and yes it does effect your insurance

What type of car your drive, survivability in an accident, occupation, how many miles you drive to work......

I drive a 4 door, full sized PU 5 miles each way to work, never take a trip, never had an accident that was my fault in the last 30 years and my insurance rate has never gone down.

Go figure.

get a second quote from another agent.

About 8 years ago, I had heard that if you drove a large SUV or truck, one would think that your insurance rate would go down, because its a safe vehicle.

As it turns out, it would actually go up. Because if you fit in a a certain age group, it not that you would have more bills, (because you would be protected.) but that little Yugo you ran over. You would be paying for the poor bastards behind the wheel of the Yugo.

Another conspriacy thoery.

I hope they never see those pictures of that wrecked race car.

What picture?

But it would have gone up if you had. Change companies and you could save $511 per year, then change again and save another $511 (according to them) . Change 3 times, and they have to pay you.

I drive less than you do, no tickets, no accidents, no claims of any kind, ever....My insurance goes up every year....When I ask them why it's going up, it should be going down, they say it's because of insurance claims increasing in amount of awards, and that everybody has to pay more...

What I would do, I would start getting quotes elsewhere.

In my history of paying insurance, when I started driving, first started out, the agent would say, your insurance will be reduced when you turn 25 years old, and a good driving record.

I put it on the back burner, few years later when I was 26, and I open my insurance premium it was steadily going up. I called and asked whats going on, I turned 25 last year, good record shouldn't it go down. The reply was, Oh, must have been some mistake. and an adjustment was made.

A few years later, every six months I would have a message on my answering machine or a call from competing insurance agent that they can get me a very low insurance premium, I didn't want to deal with it.

But when I did, more so out of curiousity after 3 years, one call from them every six months of them calling. it was 2/3 of what I had with better coverage.

I agree. It would make more sense to relate deaths to miles driven.

...or one in ten thousand population in any year.

The figures in the UK, for comparison are less than 3000 in more than 63million, or one in twenty one thousand population living there in any year.

"Lies, damned lies and statistics!"