在美国，大约每18分钟就有一人被意外致死，而2024年道路事故死亡人数达到39,000人。按人口调整后，这一死亡率是法国的2倍、英国的4倍，在较富裕国家中仅有哈萨克斯坦、格鲁吉亚、吉尔吉斯斯坦和亚美尼亚等少数国家更差，而且美国车祸死亡率在过去十年还在上升。

高死亡负担与结构性暴露一致：美国道路网络庞大、车速更高，且2024年有78%的美国劳动者开车通勤，而英国仅为55%。更大的车辆、夜间与酒驾事故集中，以及阳光地带州更偏向按通行效率而非安全设计的州属道路，共同放大了致命风险，而且这种风险在地域上分布不均。

后果不仅是受害者死亡，也包括数以万计肇事者长期、常被沉默化的创伤：受访者提到持续数年乃至数十年的内疚、关系受损、学业与工作功能下降，且有人在事故发生1年半后于4周内自杀。美国每年约有100,000起过失致死诉讼；与此同时，Jeff Speck在60座城市的改造经验显示，把红绿灯改为四向停牌可使碰撞减少三分之二，说明可量化的道路设计干预仍是同时减少死亡与次生心理伤害的关键杠杆。

In America, someone is accidentally killed about every 18 minutes, and road crashes caused 39,000 deaths in 2024. Relative to population, that fatality rate is 2x France’s and 4x Britain’s, with only a few richer-country outliers performing worse, and the US car-death rate has risen over the past decade.

The high toll aligns with structural exposure: the US has a vast road network, higher-speed driving, and in 2024, 78% of American workers commuted by car versus 55% in Britain. Larger vehicles, concentration of crashes at night and with drunk drivers, and Sunbelt street systems engineered more for throughput than safety compound lethality, with risk unevenly distributed across states.

The damage extends beyond victims to tens of thousands of drivers living with long-term, often silenced trauma: interviews describe guilt lasting years or decades, strained relationships, impaired school/work functioning, and one suicide four weeks after a crash that had occurred 1.5 years earlier. Americans file about 100,000 wrongful-death suits annually; meanwhile, Jeff Speck’s redesign work in 60 cities suggests replacing traffic lights with four-way stops can cut crashes by two-thirds, making measurable street-design changes a key lever to reduce both deaths and downstream psychological harm.

Source: Each year tens of thousands of Americans accidentally kill

Subtitle: The psychological toll it takes is huge—and mostly hidde

Dateline: 2月 26, 2026 04:27 上午 | Atlanta