The article says road deaths in USA are up 30% over last 15 years and links to https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2024-02/2.... That doc talks a lot about initiatives but what is the normal American's sense of what's going on on the street?

I dunno about the last 15 years, but my sense is there is a fairly widespread perception that drivers have become more reckless and oblivious since COVID. This isn't just about car standards (although there is probably a connection terms of things like touchscreens becoming more and more prevalent in cars) but it's a thing.

European living in the US here. Around my mostly suburban area, I see mainly SUVs and crossovers with a few vans and pickups sprinkled in. Outside the urban areas, pickups and other monsters like nine seaters seem more common.

I also see a lot - and I mean a lot - of people holding a phone while driving, even in dense city traffic. Add to that non-walkable streets in some places and unsafe rules like legal right turns on a red light. Cyclists often have to squeeze into a narrow bike lane that is level with the car lanes instead of raised onto the sidewalk. That adds up to a much higher amount of latent dangers than in Europe.

There's something you can learn from the broad scale, but SF has pretty decent tracking and perhaps there's something you can learn from looking at one city too. SF has a Collisions Report[0] and also traffic citations data is open data[1] so you can see how enforcement has changed. Subjectively, I notice a lot more red-light running, and objectively the red-light camera near my apartment illuminates the ceiling of my home office every day.

I'm now a father so one cannot discount the amount to which my tolerance of bad actors has changed, but my experience has been that the lack of enforcement for violations (right-turn red lights in SF are rarely obeyed) is definitely taken advantage of by many drivers. However, the collisions report does make it somewhat clear that a non-trivial amount of the new fatalities are due to new traffic modalities: people now have the stand up OneWheels, and there are many more food delivery drivers on e-bikes.

But one gratifying thing is that the newer parts of town where people are having children have a lot more safety construction. I was walking home from the gym here in Mission Bay when I saw a group of kids between 6 and 12 on their little scooters.

[0] https://www.visionzerosf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/San-...

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/car-traffic-pede...

People driving "Brodozers(tm)" can't see shit near the vehicle due to both the big hood and being super high up, while the gigantic, flat front grille kills people rather than crumpling them over the hood.

And while I call them "Brodozers" to be derogatory, a significant number of really tiny females are driving them as well in the name of "safety". And they REALLY can't see anything over the hood.

The combination of gigantic blind spots and complete energy transfer is good at killing unarmored people.

Americans want big cars.

American regulations created a dichotomy where there's no middle ground. Big car or sour cream dollop with no space and no power.

Americans want big because big means "safety". An SUV feels safer next to the semi than a Smart car. They also want big to haul the occasional furniture between moves, go on the occasional road trip, bring all the gear when camping, or bring back a massive shopping haul.

American housing is way less dense outside the cities. There's no reason for a compact car if you live in the burbs apart from gas mileage.

At the same time, more and more people want to build bike lanes and people infra near roads. "Strong Towns" movement, etc.

We're putting more bicyclists on the roads next to big cars now.