Normalizing by miles driven will take you to the wrong conclusions. It underestimates the extra deaths directly caused by the fact that we’ve built exurbs farther and farther away from where people work over the last 20-30 years.

So maybe deaths per mile would be similar, but we’ve pushed people further and further so they have to drive more miles, increasing the deaths due to poor design.

Building society in a way that we increase deaths due to poor planning, like making driving the only option for the majority of people, gets hidden by statistics like “per mile” or even speed limit changes, which are also more necessary as people need to go further to get to their daily activities, rather than everything being within a short walk or safe bike ride

I find any conclusion that doesn't focus on TEXTING to be suspect.

By focusing on the wrong things (especially the endless caterwauling about "speeding"), people are letting legislators off the hook for abetting murder. Texting while driving should be a DUI-level offense, with the same penalties. But year after year, they refuse to do anything about it.

This study didn’t nearly enough to disambiguate for widespread phone use while driving, which IMO is the biggest factor.

Self driving AI is the answer.