James O’Malley looked at road deaths per 100,000 people for various counties “and compared it to the scores given by the World Justice Project on Rule of Law in 2015.” The correlation came out at -0.68, suggesting that improvements in the rule of law correlate strongly with safer road conditions, possibly mediated through better driver behavior and trust between citizens. Good rule of law conditions also correlate with increased income, but that appears to have a U-shaped effect on aggregate road fatalities: when very poor countries begin to prosper more persons can own cars and the number of accidents increases, but as countries approach affluence more is invested in safety. [CityMetric via Christopher Groskopf, Quartz, including above title]
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