Safety

Lane Kenworthy, The Good Society
October 2026

Pundits routinely opine that we live in a violent era, and lots of Americans fear violence.1 About half say they worry “a great deal” about crime and violence, nearly half say crime has been rising in the area where they live, and around one-third report that they’re afraid to walk alone at night somewhere within a mile of their residence, as we see in figures 1, 2, and 3.

This is understandable. Media overreport violence relative to other causes of death.2 Fear of violence is stoked by policy makers, aspiring or already in office, who aim to sound tough on crime.3 But there’s a more basic reason. Few of us have any clue about actual rates of violence, and we tend to estimate the probability of something occurring based on the ease with which we can recall examples of it. Given our near-constant access to the internet, social media, television, and radio, we are bombarded with examples of violence — murders, sexual assaults, terrorist attacks, mass shootings, police killings of unarmed African Americans, gang violence in urban ghettos, brutal civil wars, dictatorships committing genocide. This makes it likely we’ll perceive the level of violence to be much greater than it actually is.

Figure 1. Worry a great deal about crime and violence
Share of US adults responding “a great deal” to the question “How much do you personally worry about crime and violence?” Response options: a great deal, a fair amount, only a little, not at all, no opinion. No opinion responses are excluded. Data source: Gallup, “Crime,” gallup.com. The line is a loess curve.

Figure 2. There is more crime in my area than there was a year ago
Share of US adults responding “more” to the question “Is there more crime in your area than there was a year ago, or less?” Response options: more, less, the same, no opinion. No opinion responses are excluded. Data source: Gallup, “Crime,” gallup.com. The line is a loess curve.

Figure 3. Afraid to walk alone at night near residence
Share of US adults responding “yes” to the question “Is there any area near where you live — that is, within a mile — where you would be afraid to walk alone at night?” Data sources: Gallup, “Crime,” gallup.com; General Social Survey, sda.berkeley.edu, series fear. The lines are loess curves.

In fact, we live in probably the least violent period in human history. For millennia, violence around the world has been decreasing, not increasing. In the United States, violence did rise in the 1960s and 1970s, but it began falling in the 1990s and is now back near pre-1960s levels. How, and why, has this happened?

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THE LONG-RUN DECLINE IN VIOLENCE

In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker documents a steady downward trajectory of human violence over the past 5,000 years.4 Pinker begins with the fact that, contrary to long-held assumption, humans aren’t biologically programmed to be violent. We are susceptible to five motives for violence: practical (means to an end), dominance, revenge, sadism, and ideology. But other motives and practices — empathy, self-control, the moral sense, and reason — orient us away from violence.

The level of violence among humans thus depends on the degree to which institutions and policies reduce the benefits and increase the costs of violence and thereby allow our anti-violence motives to flourish. Three institutions that do this have become increasingly prevalent over time: government, commerce, and information/knowledge/science. Government helps because a centralized authority can prevent and punish violence more effectively and on a larger scale than other actors. Commerce reduces violence because exchange of goods and services makes other people more valuable alive than dead. Literacy, mobility, schooling, and mass media increase our awareness and understanding of other people, which encourages us to empathize with them. Application of knowledge and rationality allows people “to recognize the futility of cycles of violence, to ramp down the privileging of their own interests over others’, and to reframe violence as a problem to be solved rather than a contest to be won.”5 The growth of government, commerce, and information, knowledge, and science account for much of the long-run decline in violence.

Pinker identifies a number of key advances. The first, beginning around 5,000 years ago, was the transition from “the anarchy of hunting, gathering, and horticultural societies … to the first agricultural civilizations with cities and governments,” which brought “a reduction in the chronic raiding and feuding that characterized life in a state of nature and a more or less fivefold decrease in rates of violent death.”6

A second major advance occurred in western Europe beginning in the late middle ages. It consisted of a tenfold to fiftyfold reduction in homicide due to “the consolidation of a patchwork of feudal territories into large kingdoms with centralized authority and an infrastructure for commerce.”7 Figure 4 shows this massive drop in homicide rates in five European nations.

Figure 4. Decline in homicides in western Europe after the middle ages
Homicides per 100,000 population. The vertical axis is on a log scale. Data source: Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, 2011, figure 3.3, using data from Manuel Eisner, “Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime,” Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, 2003.

The humanitarian revolution during the enlightenment period in the 17th and 18th centuries brought a third major advance. It featured “the first organized movements to abolish slavery, dueling, judicial torture, superstitious killing, sadistic punishment, and cruelty to animals, together with the first stirrings of systematic pacifism.”8 Figure 5 shows the decline in the use of judicial torture in major countries beginning around 1700, figure 6 the spread of slavery abolition, and figure 7 the reduction in executions in the United States.

Figure 5. Decline in use of judicial torture in major countries
Number of major countries using judicial torture. The countries, in the order in which they ended judicial torture, are England, Scotland, Prussia, Denmark, Sweden, Bohemia, Austria, Italy, France, United States, Switzerland, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Russia. Data source: Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, 2011, figure 4.2.

Figure 6. Decline in legal slavery
Number of countries with slavery abolished. The vertical axis is inverted. Data source: Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, 2011, figure 4.6.

Figure 7. Decline in executions in the US
Number of executions per 100,000 population. Data source: Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, 2011, figure 4.4.

World Wars I and II were notable exceptions to the downward trend in violence, but they were, in all likelihood, genuine exceptions rather than a shift in direction. Since the end of the second world war, violence has declined along a number of dimensions. Figure 8 shows that deaths produced by armed conflicts have dropped sharply. Figure 9 shows a decrease in deaths from genocide. In addition, the rights revolutions beginning in the 1950s brought a “growing revulsion against aggression on smaller scales, including violence against ethnic minorities, women, children, homosexuals, and animals.”9

Figure 8. Decline in deaths from armed conflicts
Per 100,000 population. 1500-1945: Deaths from wars involving a “great power” — nations with a large population, economy, and military, such as the United States, China, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, Germany, France, Japan, Prussia, the Habsburg Empire. Data source: Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, 2011, figure 5.15. 1950ff: Deaths of combatants and civilians due to fighting in interstate, intrastate, and extrasystemic conflicts. Data source: Our World in Data, “Death in state-based conflict by region,” using data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, geoBoundaries, and the Peace Research Institute Oslo.

Figure 9. Decline in deaths from genocide
Deaths per 100,000 population. Data source: Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, 2011, figure 6.7, using data from Rudolph Rummel (gray line) and the Political Instability Task Force (black line).

The only noteworthy exception to the downward trend in violence since the middle of the twentieth century is terrorist killings, which jumped sharply in the early 2010s, as figure 10 shows. Since the mid-2010s the frequency of deaths from terrorism has decreased quite a bit, though it remains above 1970s levels. It’s worth emphasizing that the level of terrorism deaths is very low. Over the past half century, on average about one person in 750,000 around the world has been killed by terrorism each year.

Figure 10. Deaths from terrorism
Deaths per 100,000 population. Data source: Global Terrorism Database, via Our World in Data, “Terrorism.”

THE RISE AND DECLINE OF VIOLENT CRIME IN THE UNITED STATES SINCE 1960

In the United States, the long-run trend in violence has mirrored the worldwide pattern. Figure 11 shows estimates of the US homicide rate going back to 1700 (with reliable statistics beginning in the 1930s). The decline is marked.

Figure 11. Homicides
Per 100,000 population. Data sources: 1700-1900 from Claude S. Fischer, “A Crime Puzzle,” Made in America, 2010; 1900-1932 from Douglas Lee Eckberg, “Estimates of Early Twentieth-Century U.S. Homicide Rates: an Econometric Forecasting Approach,” Demography, 1995, table 4; 1933-1950 from M. Duane Smith and Margaret A. Zahn, eds., Homicide: Sourcebook of Social Research, Sage, 1998, figure 2.1, using FBI data; 1950ff from Bureau of Justice Statistics, using FBI Uniform Crime Reports data.

The long downward trend in violence was interrupted in the 1960s and 1970s, as we see in figure 12. All four types of violent crime — homicide, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery — increased sharply beginning in the 1960s. Then, in the early 1990s, they began to fall. Homicide and robbery rates dropped all the way back to their 1960 levels. Rape and aggravated assault declined less rapidly but still a good bit.

Figure 12. Violent crime
Per 100,000 population. Each series is rescaled to vary from lowest value to highest value. The data series for rape ends in 2012 because the measure was changed in 2013. Data source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, using FBI Uniform Crime Reports data.

What caused this rise and fall of violent crime in the United States?

One prominent hypothesis points to the economy. Crime is influenced by people’s (real and perceived) economic well-being. When jobs are plentiful and wages are rising, there is less incentive to commit robberies or other types of theft that can sometimes escalate to violence.10 However, a condition-of-the-economy explanation fits poorly with two key trends in violent crime. First, the economy was quite strong in the 1960s, yet violent crime surged. Second, while many poor, working-class, and even middle-class Americans have struggled economically since the late 1970s,11 violent crime has decreased significantly (beginning in the early 1990s).12

In the 1980s and 1990s it was common for conservatives to attribute rising crime to the breakdown of the traditional male breadwinner family, the weakening of community organizations, and the turn away from religion. However, since the early 1990s those institutions haven’t strengthened — indeed, most measures suggest they’ve continued to weaken13 — whereas violent crime has declined significantly.

Most violent crime is committed by males age 15 to 30. The baby boom from 1945 to 1964 produced a surge in the number of 15-to-30-year-old males beginning in the early 1960s. This demographic bulge very likely contributed to the rise in violent crime in the 1960s and 1970s. Yet the baby boom’s peak 15-to-30-year-old population year was 1980, so if demography is a strong driver of trends in violent crime, we would expect a decline commencing around that time. Instead, the crime decline began nearly a decade and a half later.14

A fourth theory, the most influential one in guiding US policy choices, focuses on incarceration. Locking up more criminals and keeping them in jail or prison longer ought to reduce crime by getting perpetrators off the street (incapacitation) and by discouraging potential perpetrators (deterrence). From 1973 to around 2000, we steadily ramped up aggressiveness in putting criminals in prison and keeping them there for long periods of time. The “war on drugs” began in the 1970s. Mandatory minimum sentences, “three strikes” laws, and “truth in sentencing” laws, which forced judges to assign long prison terms irrespective of case circumstances, were added in the 1980s and 1990s. The likelihood of being arrested for committing a crime didn’t change much, but the likelihood of being convicted if arrested, the likelihood of being sentenced to prison or jail given a conviction, and the typical length of sentences all increased sharply.15

While incarceration surely helps to reduce violent crime, there are limits to its effectiveness. As one summary puts it16:

Deterrence theory is underpinned by a rationalistic view of crime. In this view, an individual considering commission of a crime weighs the benefits of offending against the costs of punishment. Much offending, however, departs from the strict decision calculus of the rationalistic model…. Offenders must have some knowledge of criminal penalties to be deterred from committing a crime, but in practice often do not. Furthermore, suddenly induced rages, feelings of threat and paranoia, a desire for revenge and retaliation, and self-perceptions of brilliance in the grandiose phase of manic-depressive illness all can limit a potential offender’s ability to exercise self-control. Also playing a role are personality traits and the pervasive influence of drugs and alcohol: in one study, 32 percent of state prison inmates reported being high on drugs at the time of their crime…. The influence of crime-involved peers who downplay the long-term consequences of punishment is relevant as well. Taken together, these factors mean that, even if they knew the penalties that could be imposed under the law, a significant fraction of offenders still might not be able to make the calculation to avoid crime.

The timing of the decline in violent crime is broadly consistent with the incarceration hypothesis. As figure 13 shows, we began locking more people up in the early-mid 1970s, and violent crime began falling in the early-mid 1990s.17

Figure 13. Incarceration and violent crime
Per 100,000 population. Incarceration in federal prison, state prison, or local jail. Data source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Total Correctional Population.” Violent crime: homicide, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery. Data source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, using FBI Uniform Crime Reports data.

Yet there are several empirical problems for the incarceration hypothesis. The lag between the rise in incarceration and the decline in crime was two decades. That’s longer than we might expect if incarceration has a large impact, although this may owe partly to the fact that much of the rise in incarceration was for drug crimes, rather than for violent crimes.18 Other rich countries didn’t follow the US lead in ramping up incarceration in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, yet they too experienced a drop in violent crime beginning in the mid-1990s, as figure 14 shows.19 Within the US, states that have reduced incarceration since 2000 have enjoyed the same continued decline in violent crime as states that have maintained or increased incarceration.20 According to the most thorough assessment to date, a 2014 report prepared for the National Academy of Sciences, “On balance, panel data studies support the conclusion that the growth in incarceration rates reduced crime, but the magnitude of the crime reduction remains highly uncertain and the evidence suggests it was unlikely to have been large.”21

Figure 14. Homicides
Homicides per 100,000 population. Data source: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UN ODC). The non-US average decreased from 1.5 in 1990 to 0.9 in 2019.

A fifth explanation points to changes in policing strategy. The best-known is “broken windows” or “zero tolerance” policing, which posits that aggressive deterrence and punishment of small offenses, such as vandalism and public drinking, creates an atmosphere of order and lawfulness and thereby discourages more serious crime, including violence.22 The principal evidence said to support this strategy comes from New York City, which adopted it in 1993 under new police commissioner William Bratton. New York’s murder and violent crime rates subsequently fell sharply.23 The problem for this explanation is that many other large cities which didn’t adopt this strategy, or did so only later, experienced drops in violent crime similar in timing and magnitude to that of New York, as figure 15 shows.24

Figure 15. Homicides in New York and other large cities
Homicides per 100,000 population. The other cities are Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, and Washington DC. Data source: Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Some analysts of the rise and decline in violent crime have pointed to exposure to lead during childhood. Such exposure, via car emissions or old paint, is associated with lower cognitive ability, weaker aggression and impulse control, increased likelihood of attention deficit disorder, and greater likelihood of being arrested for violent crime in adulthood.25 Use of leaded gasoline in cars rose sharply between the late 1930s and early 1970s. We then began to phase it out. As figure 16 suggests, a plot of the violent crime rate matches very closely the rise and decline of lead in gas 23 years earlier. (Heavy use of leaded gas 23 years earlier means 15-to-30-year-old males, who commit most of the violent crime, likely were exposed to a large amount early in life.) The same correlation is observable in a number of other rich nations. In addition, states varied in the rate at which lead exposure rose and fell, and state variation in trends in violent crime has tended to match these patterns. So too for six large cities.26

Figure 16. Lead in gasoline and violent crime
Each series is rescaled to equal 1 in 1960. Lead in gasoline: tons per 1,000 population. Data source: Kevin Drum, “Lead: America’s Real Criminal Element,” Mother Jones, 2013, using data from Rick Nevin. Violent crime: per 100,000 population. Data source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, using FBI Uniform Crime Reports data.

What, then, are the chief causes of the rise and decline in violent crime in the United States since 1960? Social scientists are nowhere close to consensus.27

HOW TO REDUCE VIOLENCE IN THE UNITED STATES

Though violence has decreased over the long run and in the period since the early 1990s, there is still too much of it in the United States, as figure 14 above makes clear. To most humans, murder is scary even if it is rare. For that reason alone it is important to address. Moreover, homicide tends to be concentrated in particular areas, and that affects many other aspects of life. As Thomas Abt puts it: “Every single means of bettering oneself and one’s community is hampered by high rates of homicide, if not blocked altogether. School attendance suffers when children are afraid to walk to school. Physical and mental health is impaired by the trauma of experience or witnessing violent events. Commercial and financial activity is strangled by the presence of violent crime.”28

When people feel safe, a better life is possible, as Patrick Sharkey describes: “When cities become safe, a less visible series of changes takes place in the neighborhoods that are not shown on city bus tours or tourists’ brochures. Instead of shielding their children from the world outside the apartment, parents feel more comfortable allowing their children to walk home from a park or a community center after school. Neighbors begin to talk to one another about themselves and their kids, shopping districts begin to show signs of life, local libraries start to fill up. Children move through the city without the constant worry that they may be on the wrong street, with the wrong person, at the wrong time. When they enter school, students no longer have to think about surviving and can begin to focus on learning. The most visible people in the neighborhood are no longer drug dealers, and young people can start to see themselves as potential college students, workers, young professionals, and parents. Small business owners start to wonder whether it might be worth it to set up shop, and parents stop looking for a new, safer place to live. And as they figure out what they want to do with their lives, young adults can find opportunities to work nearby.”29

In the long run, the solution is a healthy economy with prosperity that’s widely shared, an array of public goods and services that ensure everyone has an opportunity to flourish, and appropriate gun safety regulations. But a growing body of evidence and research points to some strategies that can work in the here and now.

First, ensure a large police presence. Research consistently finds that when more police are present in an area there tends to be less violent crime. This holds for cities as a whole and for areas as small as a block. We see it in comparisons across areas, in comparisons of a single area over time, and in natural experiments.30

Increasing police presence can be done selectively. When violent crime is low, there is no need for a massive and highly visible presence. “Stop and frisk” shouldn’t be used; it’s ineffective and counterproductive.31 And increases in police presence can be temporary, lasting until violence has diminished. Violence sometimes shifts to a different area in response to heightened police presence, but often it doesn’t.32 And if the police are drawing on accurate information, they can quickly respond to such shifts.

A helpful complementary strategy is to increase use of surveillance cameras and DNA databases.33

Second, support the creation and efficacy of community organizations. Patrick Sharkey and his collaborators studied the impact of nonprofits formed in large US cities between 1990 and 2012. “Some of these new organizations were business improvement districts, formed to increase public safety within a city’s shopping districts. Others were community centers set up to provide safe spaces for local youth after school, community groups that set out to transform abandoned lots into cooperative gardens, and neighborhood organizations … which set out to make sure their blocks were cared for and watched over.”34 The researchers found that in a city with a population of about 100,000 persons, each new organization created with the aim of confronting violence and building stronger neighborhoods reduced violent crime and murder by approximately one percent.35

Third, for individuals who are at risk of committing violence because of their history, their network of friends, or their location, offer immediate and extensive services, particularly cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).36 CBT trains people to be more aware of their thoughts, of the potential consequences of their actions, and of alternative choices. This sounds simple and obvious, but for many people it’s quite difficult in the absence of training. “Not one but several systematic reviews prove that CBT positively impacts criminal justice outcomes. Simply put, CBT works. It works for violent and nonviolent offenders. It works for adults and kids. It works behind prison walls and out in the community. It works by itself and when combined with other programs. Few interventions match CBT’s reliability and versatility. In one particularly exhaustive review, CBT was associated with a 25 percent average decrease in criminal recidivism — a relatively large result — but when the most effective forms of CBT were used, recidivism declined an impressive 52 percent. These outcomes were not outliers — approximately one in five of the interventions studied produced such results.”37

A small share of the population tends to account for a large share of urban violence: “In Oakland, 60 percent of murders occur within a social network of approximately one to two thousand high-risk individuals — about 0.3 percent of the city’s population. In New Orleans, a network of six hundred to seven hundred people, less than 1 percent of the city’s population, accounts for more than 50 percent of its lethal encounters. In Chicago, 70 percent of nonfatal shootings and 46 percent of fatal ones happen inside a network containing just 6 percent of the city’s residents. Even among the criminal groups known as gangs, cliques, or crews, mayhem is not distributed evenly among members. Most so-called gangs in the United States (with notable exceptions) are small and relatively disorganized, typically involving only twenty-five to thirty members…. In an average-sized group, generally only two or three members will reliably pick up a firearm and use it when there is a conflict.”38

Violence is concentrated not only among people but also places. In most cities, about half of all crime occurs within just 4 percent of city blocks.39

From a violence-reduction perspective, the fact that violent crime tends to be highly concentrated is helpful. It means focused, targeted efforts, which are less expensive, will tend to be most effective. Focused interventions also don’t tend to require big legislative initiatives. They often can be implemented without changing the rules.40

Pursued in concert, these three strategies — targeted increases in police presence, support for community organizations, and services for persons most likely to commit violence — comprise an approach referred to as “focused deterrence.” According to Thomas Abt, “In the United States, nothing works as well to reduce urban violence as focused deterrence.… It does not work perfectly, it does not work every time, but it works better, on average, than anything else out there.”41

ACCIDENTS

Intentional violence isn’t the only threat to our safety, or even the main one. In the United States, around 15,000 people are murdered each year. Vehicle accidents kill more than 35,000.

Figure 17 shows that the share of Americans killed in vehicle accidents has been falling since the early 1970s. Indeed, the death rate per mile driven has been decreasing since the early 1900s, but until the 1970s that was offset by the fact that more and more Americans were driving more and more miles.

Figure 17. Vehicle accident deaths
Per 100,000 population. Includes vehicle occupants, pedestrians, and other non-occupants. Data source: Wikipedia, “Motor Vehicle Fatality Rate in U.S. by Year,” using data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Figure 18 suggests that the US story is more nuanced. Vehicle accident deaths have fallen sharply in all of the rich democratic nations over the past three decades, but the rate of decline has been much slower in the United States than in other countries.

Figure 18. Vehicle accident deaths
Per 100,000 population. Includes vehicle occupants, pedestrians, and other non-occupants. Data source: World Health Organization Mortality Database, via OECD Data Explorer, “Causes of mortality.”

Government policies and technological advances — crash testing, padded dashboards, seat belts, air bags, helmets for motorcyclists, speed limits, reflective road lane markers, guard rails, lower legal blood alcohol levels, driver education courses, and more — have been the key to pulling down the death rate from vehicle accidents over the past century. We can do more in both areas.42

The real solution is likely to come from fully self-driving cars. The evidence suggests that they almost eliminate severe crashes and dramatically reduce even minor accidents. We’re now at a point where policy should facilitate their use, rather than slow it.43

There are other things that would help during the transition to automated driving. According to a report by the RAND Corporation, “up to 10,000 lives could be saved if currently available advanced driver assistance [ADAS], such as automatic emergency braking, lane departure warning, and blind spot detection systems, were deployed fleet-wide. Passive alcohol ignition interlock systems, such as the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADSS), might save more than 7,000 lives annually if all cars were equipped.”44 A requirement that smartphones automatically disable texting by drivers probably would help.

We can reduce driving by those who tend to do so least safely. Ride-sharing services and automated driving technology will help to decrease driving by the elderly. Nearly one-quarter of vehicle accident deaths involve drivers aged 16-20, and changes in permit requirements can reduce driving among this group.

Also valuable for reducing fatalities, particularly among pedestrians, would be a redesign of city streets and intersections. The key is to reduce the speed of driving and turning. There are myriad ways to do this. Make streets narrower. Facilitate parallel parking along curbs, which not only encourages drivers to slow down but also provides a buffer for sidewalks. Add trees along the sides of streets and in medians. Install speed and red-light cameras, or replace lights with stop signs. Prohibit right turns on red. Where feasible, replace four-way intersections with roundabouts. Make some areas car-free.45

Finally, we can shift more trips away from automobiles and toward public transit, which is a much safer form of transportation.46

SUMMARY

Nearly every type of violence is less common today than in any previous era in human history, due largely to the expansion of government, commerce, and information, knowledge, and science. There have been hiccups — World Wars I and II, the rise in violent crime in the US in the 1960s and 1970s, the recent rise in terrorist killings — but so far these have proved to be exceptions to the long-run decline in violence rather than reversals of the decline.

The rise in violent crime in the 1960s and 1970s was one of the most significant developments in the US in the past century, with consequences for crime victims and also for the large number of young Americans who, due to our “lock ’em up” policy reaction, became much more likely to serve a lengthy spell behind bars.47 There is little agreement among social scientists about the key determinants of the violent crime explosion beginning in the 1960s and its equally pronounced decline beginning in the early-mid 1990s.

Despite the long-run and more recent declines in violent crime, it remains too common in the United States. The best available evidence suggests that “focused deterrence” is key to further improvement.

Accidents are an underappreciated threat to safety. In the United States, vehicle accidents kill more than twice as many people as homicides. America’s vehicle accident death rate has been falling in recent decades, but at such a slow pace that we now have the highest rate of any rich democratic nation. Policy changes and technological advances, the keys to past improvements in vehicle accident deaths, can further reduce them going forward.

  1. For examples of pundit statements, see Steven Pinker and Andrew Mack, “The World Is Not Falling Apart,” Slate, 2014. ↩︎
  2. Hannah Ritchie, Tuna Acisu, and Edouard Mathieu, “Does the News Reflect What We Die From?,” Our World in Data, 2025. ↩︎
  3. Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America, Russell Sage Foundation, 2006, ch. 3. Campaigning for president in 2016, 2020, and 2024, Donald Trump frequently warned that “crime is out of control and rapidly getting worse.” ↩︎
  4. Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Viking, 2011. ↩︎
  5. Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Preface. ↩︎
  6. Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Preface. ↩︎
  7. Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Preface. ↩︎
  8. Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Preface. ↩︎
  9. Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Preface. ↩︎
  10. Richard B. Freeman, “Why Do So Many Young American Men Commit Crimes and What Might We Do About It?,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 1996. ↩︎
  11. Lane Kenworthy, “A Decent and Rising Income Floor,” The Good Society; Kenworthy, “Shared Prosperity,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  12. Franklin E. Zimring, The Great American Crime Decline, Oxford University Press, 2007, ch. 3. ↩︎
  13. Lane Kenworthy, “Family,” The Good Society; Kenworthy, “Civic Engagement,” The Good Society; Kenworthy, “Religion,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  14. Zimring, The Great American Crime Decline, ch. 3. ↩︎
  15. Jeremy Travis, Bruce Western, and Steve Redburn, eds., The Growth of Incarceration in the United States, National Academies Press, 2014, ch. 2. ↩︎
  16. Travis, Western, and Redburn, eds., The Growth of Incarceration in the United States, pp. 133-34. ↩︎
  17. Incarceration data that include federal, state, and local inmates begin in 1972. Data that don’t include local jails are available farther back in time; they too suggest the rise in incarceration began in the early-mid 1970s. See Travis, Western, and Redburn, eds., The Growth of Incarceration in the United States, figure 2.1. ↩︎
  18. Zimring, The Great American Crime Decline, ch. 3; Travis, Western, and Redburn, eds., The Growth of Incarceration in the United States, ch. 2; “America Is Waking Up to the Cost of Mass Incarceration,” The Economist, 2013. ↩︎
  19. Zimring, The Great American Crime Decline, ch. 6; Eric P. Baumer and Kevin T. Wolff, “Evaluating Contemporary Crime Drop(s) in America, New York City, and Many Other Places,” Justice Quarterly, 2014. ↩︎
  20. Bruce Western, “Crime and Punishment,” Boston Review, 2012. ↩︎
  21. Travis, Western, and Redburn, eds., The Growth of Incarceration in the United States, p. 155. ↩︎
  22. George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson, “Broken Windows,” The Atlantic, 1982. ↩︎
  23. Franklin E. Zimring, “How New York City Beat Crime,” Scientific American, 2011. ↩︎
  24. See also Richard Rosenfeld, Robert Fornango, and Andres F. Rengifo, “The Impact of Order-Maintenance Policing on New York City Homicide and Robbery Rates, 1988-2001,” Criminology, 2007; Baumer and Wolff, “Evaluating Contemporary Crime Drop(s).” ↩︎
  25. Christopher Muller, Robert J. Sampson, and Alix S. Winter, “Environmental Inequality: The Social Causes and Consequences of Lead Exposure,” Annual Review of Sociology, 2018. ↩︎
  26. Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, “Environmental Policy as Social Policy? The Impact of Childhood Lead Exposure on Crime,” Working Paper 13097, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2007; John Paul Wright, Kim N Dietrich, M. Douglas Ris, Richard W. Hornung, Stephanie D. Wessel, Bruce P. Lanphear, Mona Ho, and Mary N. Rae, “Association of Prenatal and Childhood Blood Lead Concentrations with Criminal Arrests in Early Adulthood,” PLOS: Medicine, 2008; Howard W. Mielke and Sammy Zahran, “The Urban Rise and Fall of Air Lead (Pb) and the Latent Surge and Retreat of Societal Violence,” Environment International, 2012; Kevin Drum, “Lead: America’s Real Criminal Element,” Mother Jones, 2013; Rick Nevin, Lucifer Curves: The Legacy of Lead Poisoning, 2016; A. Aizer and J. Currie, “Lead and Juvenile Delinquency: New Evidence from Linked Birth, School, and Crime Records,” Working Paper 23392, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2017. ↩︎
  27. Baumer and Wolff, “Evaluating Contemporary Crime Drop(s).” ↩︎
  28. Thomas Abt, Bleeding Out: The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence — and a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets, Hachette, 2019, p. 21. See also Patrick Sharkey, Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress Toward Racial Equality, University of Chicago Press, 2018, ch. 2. ↩︎
  29. Sharkey, Stuck in Place, pp. 109-110. See also Matthew E. Kahn and Mac McComas, Unlocking the Potential of Post-Industrial Cities, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021. ↩︎
  30. Sharkey, Stuck in Place; Abt, Bleeding Out. ↩︎
  31. Matthew Yglesias, “‘Stop and Frisk’ Was Really Bad,” Slow Boring, Substack, December 1, 2021. ↩︎
  32. Abt, Bleeding Out, p. 42. ↩︎
  33. Jennifer L. Doleac, “The Effects of DNA Databases on Crime,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2017; Eric L. Piza et al, “CCTV Surveillance for Crime Prevention: A 40-Year Systematic Review with Meta-Analysis,” Criminology and Public Policy, 2019; Anne Sofie Tegner Anker, Jennifer L. Doleac, and Rasmus Landerso, “The Effect of DNA Databases on the Deterrence and Detection of Offenders,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2021. ↩︎
  34. Sharkey, Stuck in Place, p. 53. ↩︎
  35. Sharkey, Stuck in Place, ch. 3. ↩︎
  36. Thomas Abt offers a thorough description: “The work begins with forming a partnership among police, prosecutors, key community members, and social service providers who can deliver under difficult circumstances…. Once the partnership is created, it sets out to identify the key groups, group members, and group dynamics that are driving the violence…. Once the relevant groups and group members have been identified and resources have been marshalled, the partnership is ready to confront those driving the violence. This is done face to face, in group and one-on-one meetings, with a twofold message of caring and consequences…. Many are required to attend as a condition of their probation or parole. At these meetings, the partnership voices its commitment to keeping group members alive and out of prison. It offers assistance and support while also clearly describing the sanctions that will be imposed should the violence continue. After the meetings end, the partnership must follow up relentlessly, following through on the promises that were made. The partnership must establish working relationships with group members, first to keep them safe and out of jail or prison, then to get them on a path to opportunity. To win their trust, the partnership reaches out tirelessly — calling, texting, and visiting — trying to connect with each member as frequently and for as long as possible. Once a person is safe and stable, longer-term planning can begin. A life plan can be drafted, with treatment, counseling, and mentoring provided, connecting group members to new peers and role models for making better life decisions. Access to formal services such as employment, education, and housing can be arranged. A key component of this work is making sure members are not caught up in endless bureaucracies — prior arrangements must be made to ensure they have quick access to the services they need. For those who persist in violent behavior, police and prosecutors use targeted law enforcement strategies to hold offenders and their associates fully accountable, sending a strong message that such conduct will not be tolerated. Law enforcement acts by ‘pulling every lever’ to sanction violence among these members — anything  from arrests to strict enforcement of probation and parole violations.” Abt, Bleeding Out, pp. 89-92. ↩︎
  37. Abt, Bleeding Out, p. 100. ↩︎
  38. Abt, Bleeding Out, p. 33. ↩︎
  39. Abt, Bleeding Out, p. 34. ↩︎
  40. Abt, Bleeding Out. ↩︎
  41. Abt, Bleeding Out, p. 87. ↩︎
  42. Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now, Viking, 2018, ch. 12. ↩︎
  43. Jonathan Slotkin, “The Human Driver Is a Failed Experiment,” New York Times, 2025. ↩︎
  44. Liisa Ecola, Steven W. Popper, Richard Silberglitt, Laura Fraade-Blanar, “The Road to Zero: A Vision for Achieving Zero Roadway Deaths by 2050,” RAND Corporation, 2018, p. 8. ↩︎
  45. Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck, Suburban Nation, Tenth anniversary edition, North Point Press, 2010; The Economist, “Why Sweden Has So Few Road Deaths,” 2014; Jeff Speck, Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places, Island Press, 2018; Buehler and Pucher 2021; Eve Kessler, “How Hoboken Has Eliminated Traffic Deaths,” StreetsBlog NYC, April 6, 2021; Charles L. Marohn, Jr., Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town, Wiley, 2021; David Zipper, “Why ‘Vision Zero’ Hit a Wall,” Bloomberg CityLab, April 11, 2022; Abi Olvera, “Traffic Fatalities Are a Choice,” Asterisk, 2025. ↩︎
  46. Todd Litman, “A New Transit Safety Narrative,” Journal of Public Transportation, 2014. ↩︎
  47. Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen, Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy, Oxford University Press, 2006; Western, Punishment and Inequality in America; Devah Pager, Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration, University of Chicago Press, 2007; Sara Wakefield and Christopher Wildeman, Children of the Prison Boom: Mass Incarceration and the Future of American Inequality, Oxford University Press, 2013; Jeffrey D. Morenoff and David J. Harding, “Incarceration, Prisoner Reentry, and Communities,” Annual Review of Sociology, 2014. ↩︎