Continuing our discussion that was closed by moderators...
Are German drivers "better" than American drivers?
If you judge "better" by lower number of fatalities, I would contend the clear answer is yes. There are many causes but I believe regulatory and training issues are the most important. It would be good to include other accidents such as all traffic accidents, accidents with injuries and accidents with serious injuries, but I have no doubt that those would follow the clear trends seen below.
Quote:
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The sizable traffic safety lead enjoyed by the USA since the 1960s had narrowed significantly by 2002, with the US improvement percentages lagging in 16th place behind those of Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Iceland, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland in terms of deaths per thousand vehicles, while in terms of deaths per 100 million vehicle miles travelled, the USA had dropped from first place to tenth place.
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-source wikipedia
The table below summarizes fatal accident statistics in many different flavors since 1995. In all years and in all cases except for 2 German figures are lower than US figures. Those exceptions are also the oldest data in the range examined. Web sites and documents I used to generate the table are either attached or referenced below.
http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
http://www.destatis.de/jetspeed/port...nderLarge.psml
http://www.autoweek.com/apps/pbcs.dl...73292266364530
*Missing data was not available. Bold data used numbers read from graphs and thus are not official nor accurate and likely involve a few percent error from visual interpolation.