If you look at this 2023 report[0] you can see the following sort of stats (page 34):
between 2012-2023 there were the following evolution in the number of road deaths per year:
- 60% drop in Lithuania
- 50% drop in Poland
- ~38% drop in Japan
- 20% drop in Germany
- 20% increase(!) in Israel, New Zealand and the US
so abstractly, looking at what those countries did in the past 10 years and considering whether changes would work or be applicable for you (and maybe not doing whatever NZ or the US is doing)
For Japan's case, they applied a lot of traffic calming[0]. In particular, in 2011 Japan changed up rules to allow for traffic calming through a simple and cheap method: setting the speed limit to 30km/h in various spots. [1] has a summary of the report.
Now, one thing I do know about Japan is that their qualification of road deaths is ... dishonest is strong but it's technical. If someone is in a car accident and survives a couple of days, but dies later from complications, that is not counted as a road fataility (IIRC it's a 24 hour window thing).
I would like to point something out though. Between 2003 and 2016 car accidents nearly halved (from 940k to 540k). Between 2013 and 2023 fatalities according to their metrics dropped 40 percent.
I think you could describe a part of it as COVID-related, though not that much. The trends predate COVID and continued beyond 2020-2021 (really the peak of activity being pulled back in Japan).
I think it would be very hard to argue that COVID explains both the Japan drops while seeing increases in other countries to that extent. In the comparative analysis one can argue that COVID affected some places more than others, of course. But the improvement gap between, say, Japan and New Zealand is pretty huge!
between 2012-2023 there were the following evolution in the number of road deaths per year:
- 60% drop in Lithuania
- 50% drop in Poland
- ~38% drop in Japan
- 20% drop in Germany
- 20% increase(!) in Israel, New Zealand and the US
so abstractly, looking at what those countries did in the past 10 years and considering whether changes would work or be applicable for you (and maybe not doing whatever NZ or the US is doing)
For Japan's case, they applied a lot of traffic calming[0]. In particular, in 2011 Japan changed up rules to allow for traffic calming through a simple and cheap method: setting the speed limit to 30km/h in various spots. [1] has a summary of the report.
Now, one thing I do know about Japan is that their qualification of road deaths is ... dishonest is strong but it's technical. If someone is in a car accident and survives a couple of days, but dies later from complications, that is not counted as a road fataility (IIRC it's a 24 hour window thing).
I would like to point something out though. Between 2003 and 2016 car accidents nearly halved (from 940k to 540k). Between 2013 and 2023 fatalities according to their metrics dropped 40 percent.
Things can be done
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming
[1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6951391/ [0]: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/report...