Foreign Affairs - 03.2020 - 04.2020

March/April 2020 141

JANETTE SADIKKHAN is a Principal at Bloomberg Associates. From 2007 to 2013, she

was Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation.

SETH SOLOMONOW is a Manager at Bloomberg Associates. From 2007 to 2013, he was

Deputy Commissioner for External A“airs at the New York City Department of Transportation.

They are the authors of Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution.

Mean Streets

The Global Tra¾c Death Crisis

Janette Sadik-Khan and Seth Solomonow

S

ome causes o’ death have little trouble catching the public’s at-

tention. Avian “u, Ebola, and Zika have dominated news cycles

and prompted international travel advisories. Plane crashes in-

terrupt broadcasts and lead to thorough government investigations.

Cancer, heart disease, and ΰÏ/³°½ ́ now attract billions o’ dollars o’

research. But one o’ the biggest killers o’ all gets little attention from

governments, the media, or the general public. Car crashes killed 1.35

million people in 2016—the last year for which World Health Organ-

ization data are available—a grisly 3,698 deaths a day. Tra¾c injuries

are now the top killer o’ people aged ¥ve to 29 globally, outpacing any

illness and exceeding the combined annual casualties o’ all o’ the

world’s armed con“icts. And the toll continues to rise: it grew by

100,000 in just three years, from 2013 to 2016. This does not include

the up to 50 million people who are hit and injured by motor vehicles

each year, some grievously, but who nonetheless survive. The eco-

nomic losses are estimated at three percent o’ global ±½Ä.

In many high-income countries, the per capita tra¾c death rate

has dropped over the last 50 years, in part thanks to advances in car

safety and stricter drunk-driving laws. In the United States, tra¾c

fatalities have fallen by nearly a third since the middle o’ the twenti-

eth century. But even so, 36,560 Americans died in car crashes in

2018—about as many as were killed by guns. Moreover, the news is

getting worse for people not in a vehicle. In 2018, the number o’

Americans killed by cars while walking or riding a bike reached