Volume 13 Issue 1 of Libery Mutual’s Liberty Lines magazine includes a timeline called “Model T to Infiniti: 100 Years of Safety Innovations.”

The timeline’s introduction states that “…because of ever-increasing safety innovations, the rate of fatalities has decreased.”

That’s a pretty misleading if not dishonest statement.

Liberty Mutual’s timeline begins in 1900 when fatalities due to automobiles was a rarity nationwide. By 1907 there were roughly 500 fatalities (fewer than 6 fatalities per million Americans) which grew sharply over time.

There were over 37,000 people killed in 2008 (more than 120 fatalities per million Americans.)

That’s not a lower rate.

Perhaps the fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles travel has dropped with people driving more, but that’s hardly something to celebrate when we lose the equivalent of a medium-sized U.S. city of people every year.

And about 14% of those fatalities are pedestrians and bicyclists. Looking at a rate based on vehicle miles travel only serves to hide these fatalities.

[The road fatality chart was published in Peter Norton’s excellent book, Fighting Traffic.]