Transportation Fatalities: A Modal Picture
Over the last 25 years, fatalities on the nation’s roads, rails, and waters and in the skies have declined (figure 1). Despite progress, transportation crashes and incidents claimed 43,873 lives in 1999, of which 41,611 involved highway vehicles. (The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s early assessment of highway fatalities in 2000 is 41,800.) Occupants of passenger cars and light trucks (i.e., sport utility vehicles, vans and minivans, and pickup trucks) accounted for over 70 percent of the transportation fatalities in 1999; pedestrians, motorcyclists, bicyclists, and others involved in motor vehicle collisions accounted for most of the remaining deaths (table 1).