[Beck]

Comparing traffic deaths as a percentage of a nation's population is flawed and leads one to wrong conclusion. One could probably find some third world country that would make Germany's fatality rate look as bad as the US's being compared to Germany's simply because so few of the population have cars. What is more relevant is the deaths per million miles driven. This puts everything on a more even playing field for statistical comparsion. I don't have the stats handy, but when looked at that way, the US fares much better. One factor in the US death rate is simply that the population puts itself at risk more than the rest of the world by driving more miles (the result of cheap gas and no public transportation).