Road crashes kill more than a million people every year globally and are the leading cause of death for children and young adults. In the US, about 100 people die per day, often on rural and local streets rather than highways. The reporting argues that these deaths are largely preventable: driver mistakes matter, but so do roads built for speed, screen-filled vehicles, and intersections where pedestrians and cyclists are hard to see. Proven fixes such as planters, curb extensions, and lower speed limits are often inexpensive, yet government logjams slow their rollout.
Progress is real but uneven. The US death rate has fallen from its 1930s peak, but pedestrian fatalities have jumped in the past decade. Hoboken, New Jersey, has had no traffic deaths since 2017, thanks to public transit investment, walkability measures, and cameras that flag dangerous intersections. Edmonton, Alberta, cut traffic fatalities by 63 percent and serious injuries by 40 percent between 2015 and 2020 by adjusting speed limits and improving crosswalk signals. Those examples suggest change is possible, even in car-centric cities.
The harder part is implementation. Officials involved in these efforts describe the work as selling insurance: improvements are hard to justify until a street is already proven deadly. Dense places like Hoboken may also have advantages that sprawling cities like Memphis or Dallas lack. The source is a single MIT Technology Review package, so there are no conflicting accounts to reconcile; its overall conclusion is that traffic deaths should no longer be treated as inevitable. Getting the funding and the will to act is the real red light.