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Comment by virgilp | Hacker News Reader

As a percentage of "miles traveled by car"? Absolutely.

Source?

The graph in the picture showed 16K deaths in 1923, for a US population of 111M then, with likely much smaller per capita driving miles than now. Now population is 323M, and there are around 5K pedestrian/car deaths annually [1]. We drive around 3 trillion miles annually[2].

If you can find the total or per capita miles driven in 1923, I think that would make the data complete. But it seems quite clear pedestrian deaths are vastly lower now than in 1923.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/pedestrian_safety/ind...

[2] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/pressroom/fhwa1704.cfm

Just to be clear, and I don’t think you said otherwise, that 5k number is only pedestrian deaths. In 2016 there were 37,000 fatalities from motor vehicle crashes.

The figure in the article is similarly reporting all automotive fatalities.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths...

> Just to be clear, and I don’t think you said otherwise, that 5k number is only pedestrian deaths

I clearly wrote "pedestrian/car deaths" and linked to a source that clearly explained it. I'm not sure how else to put it.

Here's a better answer [1]: 21 fatalities per 100M vehicle miles of travel in 1923 to 1.36 in 2007. That should completely answer the request for a source.

[1] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2007/p...

It's worth noting that this is /pedestrian/ deaths from cars. Total motor vehicle deaths are around 40k a year in the US.

Yes, and the rate has decreased a lot since 1923, as the OP claimed [1]: 21 fatalities per 100M vehicle miles of travel in 1923 to 1.36 in 2007.

[1] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2007/p...

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