National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is an agency under the U.S. Government, a section of the Department of Transportation. The agency’s motto is to save lives, reduce vehicle-related crashes and thus prevent injuries through accidents. They have been recording stats regarding the number of fatalities on U.S. roadways, annually since 1975. The number of fatalities has gone down below 40,000 deaths only once. The new figures of the year 2008 show a shift from the familiar figures. The number of road accidents related deaths in the US have reduced dramatically to 37,261 in 2008. The figures released reveal that there is a 9.7-percent decrease from 41,259 in 2007 to 37,261 in 2008 as given by the NHTSA’s 2008 Fatality Analysis Reporting System.

Studies demonstrate that about 90 percent of this reduction was in passenger vehicles. Passenger car accident deaths have dropped by 13 %, for the sixth, consecutive year now, and Light-truck fatalities declined for the third, consecutive year now. Despite of the reduction in number of motorcycles registered, the motorcyclist fatalities followed its 11-year increase, to 5290 deaths in 2008 compared to 5174 in 2007. Large trucks registered the greatest percentage increase in accidents with 14% fatalities. The figures illustrate that, only the percentage of motorcycle and pedal cyclists have increased with 2.2% and 2.1% respectively.

Stats regarding the injury figures illustrate that about 2.35 million people got injured in motor accidents in 2008, compared to 2.49 million in 2007. This figure of 1998 is the lowest as estimated by NHTSA since they began collecting data in 1988. This reduction in number of injured people has been featuring a steady decrease for the previous seven consecutive years. Only, the number of people injured among pedal cyclists features an increase in 2008 with a 21% increase. Meanwhile, passenger vehicles, passenger cars, light trucks, and motorcycles featured a percentage decrease. The number of motorcyclist injured showed the first decrease since 1998, a reduction of 6.8 percent.

The fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT) featured an all-time low of 1.27 in 2008. This is in effect a 6.6% decline. The overall injury rate also declined, by 2.4 percent. The 2008 rates gets based on the latest-Traffic Volume Trend estimates from the Federal Highway Administration published on April 2009. Another observation is that the decline in total fatality rates in 2008 is steeper than the decrease in VMT since December 2007. There are many other additional factors other than reduction in total miles traveled that affect the outcome from motor vehicle crashes. Accident cases with alcohol impaired fatality in which the driver has a blood alcohol concentration [BAC] of .08 grams per deciliter [g/dL] or greater has declined by 9.7 percent in 2008. Another point observed is that the percentage decline in the total number of crashes, matches the percentage decline in overall VMT of about 3.5%.

[source: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811172.pdf]