There’s a lot of good information here, but there are some very important contributions to highway safety that have not been touched on yet. The crashworthiness of automobiles has increased many-fold over the last thirty years in particular. Much of the credit goes to the auto companies for building better vehicles than the public even realizes.
While I agree that limiting drunk drivers (yes, the old days were as bad as they say), and improved First Responder capabilities are great, the design of your car has a lot of safety features that you are totally unaware of. For example, the structure itself is full of “crash triggers” that result in the car absorbing crash energy by crumpling in designed ways that protect passengers. Many people curse the expense of repairing a damaged unibody vehicle, but their not factoring in the injuries they escaped. The placement of these triggers is derived from crash testing vehicles even long after they are in production. The other major limitation on fatalities is the virtual elimination of the post-crash fire that use to kill many people who had survived the crash itself, another result of crash testing. Crash testing has provided data to inspire many safety features that no one would have thought of otherwise, although these crashes cost many millions of dollars each year.
Although his name is cursed in the auto industry, all these safety crashes and safety initiatives are due to the work of Ralph Nader in the 1960’s and 70’s. Not only that, but in spite of ridiculous litigation awards, the threat of litigation is a vital factor in auto companies’ pursuit of safety. The size of the awards need to be mitigated to eliminate the jackpot mentality of accident attorneys, but litigation is a valid way of maintaining product integrity on all products here in the U.S. in other countries, the government does that very well, especially in Germany and Japan. There is no coincidence to their being the leaders of the industry.
What concerns me however, is that the better the cars get, the more careless the drivers become. The response is to make driving even easier, thus removing them even further from the situational awareness everyone needs to bring to the process of hurtling down the road inside of a 6000 pound cannonball. Personally, i think automation is making everyone stupid, simply by limiting their participation, and hence, their understanding of what they’re doing.
I have lived in other countries (Germany, Canada, Jordan, and the West Indies). Outside the United States, it takes a minimum of two years to get a drivers license, and they don’t give you one until you’ve passed a test at each stage; G1, with a fully licensed driver; G2 surface streets only; G3, highway capable. The difference is only too obvious when you’ve lived there.