> Compared with urban areas, crash deaths in rural areas in 2021 were less likely to occur on interstates and freeways (14 percent compared with 21 percent) and on other arterial roads (23 percent compared with 58 percent) and more likely to occur on collector roads (44 percent compared with 11 percent) and local roads (19 percent compared with 11 percent).
In other words, majority of rural traffic deaths are not on freeways.
Yes, but I still reject the idea that San Francisco is an especially fatal city to drive in.
Looking for statistics on San Francisco in particular, in 2016 the city averaged an estimated 5.6 million vehicle miles per day, and an average of 29 traffic fatalities per year. That puts it at about 1.4 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles, smack dab in between the national averages for urban (1.2) and rural (1.7) traffic fatalities.
So 5 million vehicle miles continues to be a small sample size, with an estimated 0.07 deaths for San Francisco.
(I'm also not sure the drill down that urban fatalities happen on freeway & arterial roads and rural fatalities happen on local & collector roads helps the self-driving cars in SF; it seems like the speed-limited self-driving cars should be spending most of their time on the absurdly safe local roads in the city.)
There are only a few miles of freeway in the entire city of San Francisco, so I doubt too many of the accidents in SF are from them. Yes, driving 25mph in a modern car with crumple zones and 10 airbags is generally very safe. If you look at the statistics [1], most traffic fatalities in the city are either pedestrians or bicycles. Avoiding pedestrians and bicycles is one of the tougher challenges of making a safe AV, and San Francisco is one of the most challenging places in the country for this.
> Compared with urban areas, crash deaths in rural areas in 2021 were less likely to occur on interstates and freeways (14 percent compared with 21 percent) and on other arterial roads (23 percent compared with 58 percent) and more likely to occur on collector roads (44 percent compared with 11 percent) and local roads (19 percent compared with 11 percent).
In other words, majority of rural traffic deaths are not on freeways.