Is part of the reason that there are a lot of younger men dying at much younger ages which skews the life expectancy? Or do they exclude outliers when they are putting the numbers together?
Is the accident rate higher than (say) Canada and Australia, or is the prognosis for recovery after an injury so much worse?
Here in Australia in my youth we jumped out of aircraft and helicopters, from one moving vehicle into another on dirt roads, jumped 40 ft off of deep water jetties into shark infested waters, climbed into crushers on mine sites to unbog them, washed live HV power lines in faraday suits risking jump over, played with snakes, ... all the fun stuff and despite that my generation has 10 years greater life expectancy from birth than my US cohort generation.
https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/child-a...
Both issues disproportionately affect small segments of the population though, rather than being general hazards. Driving deaths for example tend to be more evenly distributed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_S...
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/18/1176830906/overdose-death-202...
I don’t know how much of this is relevant in 2023. I suspect driving is more restricted than when I was a child. The other major factor is the crime gang warfare that tends to kill a lot of young men. Most Americans will never intersect this subset of the population but it is a major source of skew in longevity statistics.
For better or worse, if you survive into your mid-30s, Americans have a long life expectancy. There are significant sub-populations for who those early years are significant filters.
Australia is kind of big and kind of sparse (check map) and has cars; I live in a state 3x larger than Texas and drove 40 km to high school 5 days a week (and back again in the afternoon), and travelled > 1,000 km to reach the nearest university.
It's true that USofA citizens have more fatalities per driver mile which does prompt a 'why?' - poor signage, no seatbelts, chronic attention deficit ??
Indigenous Australians haver lower life expectancy and higher fatalities at younger ages.
The rate of fatal injuries are definitely still an anomalous thing for young people in the US.
Australia requires you to take a driving test - a "written" largely multi choice test to demonstrate understanding of road rules, success there gives you [L] learner plates that allow you to drive under supervision and practice. You then have to pass a practical driving test to gain [P] probationary plates for unassisted driving with some restrictions - after a year or so you're a full driver.
No driving school is required - but it can help if you don't have access to a cool calm collected experienced driver who can walk you the skills test - reversing, parallel park, correct signalling, emergency stop, etc.