US could learn from Canada on road safety

Stronger distracted driving and seat belt laws and more widespread use of speed safety cameras are among the policies that have helped keep Canada on track when it comes to reducing road fatalities while the U.S. has faltered, a new study shows.

Researchers from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and Canada’s Traffic Injury Research Foundation (TIRF) sought to understand the reasons behind the different road safety pictures in the two countries. Traffic deaths in the U.S. have been generally inching up since 2011 after a long period of decline, while in Canada deaths have continued to fall.

“The U.S. could learn a lot from our northern neighbor,” said IIHS President David Harkey. “Our countries are culturally very similar, so there is reason to believe that many policies that work there could help the U.S. get back on the right track when it comes to road safety.”

IIHS recently announced 30x30 — a vision to reduce U.S. road fatalities 30% by 2030 — and is aiming to rally the safety community around it. The goal flips the more than 30% rise in road deaths that occurred in the U.S. in recent years. IIHS estimates show that it’s attainable with the right combination of policy changes.

Among 29 high-income countries, the U.S. has the highest per capita crash fatality rate — more than twice the average of the other 28. Many of the other countries have been more ambitious with their safety policies in recent decades, especially when it comes to things like speed and alcohol. That is true of Canada, whose per capita fatality rate is less than half that of the U.S. and which ranks 14th among the 28 countries.

“Many of the countries that managed to improve road safety in recent years have leaned into the Safe System framework, which approaches risks from all angles to create overlapping layers of protection and ensure that no single mistake is fatal,” said IIHS Senior Research Scientist Becca Weast, a co-author of the new paper. “Canada’s policies reflect that approach.”

More miles, fewer fatalities

From 2011 to 2021, the number of fatalities in the U.S. increased 33%, from 32,479 to 43,230. In Canada, from 2011 to 2020, the last year data were available at the time of the study, road fatalities declined 18%, from 2,166 to 1,776. The progress occurred despite the fact that in Canada the population, number of licensed drivers and miles driven all increased at a greater pace than in the U.S. during this time period.

U.S. and Canadian fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled