Between 1994 and 2020, motorcyclist’s road deaths in the US increased by 140%, says a recent New York Times report. This compares with a 19% increase among pedestrians and 17% among cyclists. Drivers were 10% less likely to die, and deaths of passengers in cars improved by a staggering 42%. What’s going on?

First of all, note that motorcycle registrations doubled in the US between 2002 and 2020. Percentagewise, fewer motorcyclists are dying now than in 2002. But that still leaves us with the disproportionate increase compared to all other road users.

The US has diverged over the past decade from other comparably developed countries, where traffic fatalities have been falling. In 2021, nearly 43,000 people died on American roads, the government estimates. And the recent rise in fatalities has been particularly pronounced among those the government classifies as most vulnerable — cyclists, motorcyclists, pedestrians.

The newspaper speculates that much of the explanation for America’s appalling road safety record lies with a transportation system designed primarily to move cars quickly, not to move people safely.

“In the 1990s, per capita roadway fatalities across developed countries were significantly higher than today,” says the Times report. “Then a revolution in car safety brought more seatbelt usage, standard-issue airbags and safer car frames, said Yonah Freemark, a researcher at the Urban Institute.”

“Fatalities fell as a result, in the US and internationally. But as cars grew safer for the people inside them, the US didn’t progress as other countries did to prioritizing the safety of people outside them.”

“Other countries started to take seriously pedestrian and cyclist injuries in the 2000s — and started making that a priority in both vehicle design and street design — in a way that has never been committed to in the United States,” Mr. Freemark said. These diverging histories mean that while the US and France had similar per capita fatality rates in the 1990s, Americans today are three times as likely to die in a traffic crash, according to Mr. Freemark’s research.”

I hate to say this, but it does look as if the inmates who maintain that US society as a whole doesn’t care about motorcyclists – or cyclists, or pedestrians – have a point.