America Just Had Its Safest Year in a Decade. It’s Still the Deadliest Rich Country on Earth.

The National Safety Council announced in March that 37,810 Americans died in motor vehicle crashes in 2025, a 12% decline from 2024 and the largest single-year drop in recent memory.^[1] Press releases were issued, progress was declared, and at least four official statements deployed the word "encouraging."

Meanwhile, a CDC study published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report had already compared U.S. traffic death rates against 27 other high-income countries from 2013 through 2022, and what it found should have made those press releases feel obscene.^[2] During that decade, the median high-income country cut its overall traffic death rate by 19.4%, while America increased its own rate by 22.5%. For pedestrians specifically, other countries achieved a median 24.7% reduction while America posted a 50% increase.

Run the arithmetic on 2025. With a population near 335 million and 37,810 deaths, the United States produces a rate of roughly 11.3 per 100,000 residents. The CDC study pegged the 2022 U.S. pedestrian death rate at approximately three times the median of the 27 comparison countries, and OECD transport safety data places the typical high-income country's overall traffic death rate between 4 and 5 per 100,000. Apply a median of approximately 5 per 100,000 to the American population and you get roughly 16,750 expected deaths, which means the United States, in its celebrated best year, still produced approximately 21,000 excess traffic fatalities compared with what a typical rich country would tolerate.^[2] Twenty-one thousand people who would statistically still be alive if they had the misfortune of living in France, or Japan, or New Zealand, or any of the other two dozen countries that figured out how roads work.

Pedestrian deaths tell the more concentrated version of the same failure. The Governors Highway Safety Association reported 3,024 people killed while walking during the first half of 2025, down 10.9% from the prior year and the largest decline GHSA has recorded in 15 years of tracking.^[3] That number is still 2.5% higher than the first half of 2019, the last pre-pandemic baseline, and over 15 years American pedestrian fatalities rose 72%. Just those 3,024 half-year deaths carry a financial cost exceeding $40 billion.

What changed is documented in the CDC study itself. In 2012, sedans accounted for 50% of new U.S. vehicle sales. By 2022, sedans had collapsed to 21%, while SUVs, vans, and pickup trucks climbed to 79%. Pedestrians struck by an SUV or pickup truck are 50% to 100% more likely to die than pedestrians struck by a passenger car.^[2] No other country in the comparison experienced this degree of fleet transformation toward taller, heavier vehicles with higher bumpers and worse forward visibility. Americans didn't just fail to keep up with the safety improvements happening in peer nations; they actively engineered a more lethal road environment, vehicle by vehicle, purchase by purchase, and then celebrated when the killing slowed down by 12%.

An honest counterargument is that per-capita comparisons between the U.S. and Europe are inherently unfair. Americans drive more, often substantially more, than residents of countries with denser transit networks and walkable cities, and the CDC study uses population-based denominators rather than vehicle-miles-traveled rates because consistent VMT data is not available across all 28 countries.^[2] If you correct for the fact that Americans drive roughly twice as many miles per capita as the median European, the per-mile risk gap narrows. It does not close. And the CDC authors themselves note that adjusting for VMT would remove a significant contributor to the problem: American sprawl and car dependence are not confounders to be controlled for but rather central features of the system that kills people.

Limitations: The 21,000 excess death estimate uses the median 2022 overall death rate of comparison countries extrapolated to 2025, which introduces uncertainty because 2025 final rates for all 28 countries are not yet available. The per-capita methodology does not adjust for differences in driving exposure, age distribution, or road network characteristics. NSC's 37,810 estimate is preliminary and may shift as data matures, because NSC uses NCHS data including deaths within 100 days and on private roadways, which yields slightly higher counts than FARS. State-level variation is dramatic: California's 40% decline and Hawaii's 25% increase in 2025 suggest that national aggregates obscure different trajectories within the country.^[1]

What you can do: Check the NSC's injury facts database at injuryfacts.nsc.org to see your state's trajectory. If you vote on transportation policy, look for candidates who fund protected pedestrian infrastructure and speed management rather than highway expansion. If you are purchasing a vehicle, understand that the size and hood height of what you drive directly influences whether a pedestrian survives a collision with you. IIHS publishes pedestrian crash prevention ratings at iihs.org/ratings, and choosing a vehicle with good pedestrian AEB and a lower front profile is one of the few individual decisions that can bend a national curve that 27 other countries have already bent without you.