US Road Fatalities 2001-09 mapped with OpenStreetMap

Here is a similar map of UK - http://map.itoworld.com/.

I ride a motorcycle. They say if you're a lifetime rider, odds are you are going to get in one major crash in your lifetime. Both my uncles, several neighbors, and my grandfather have been in wrecks (none lethal, thank god), but everyone of them knows someone who died in a motorcycle accident it seems. I dumped my bike once, nothing serious, but I'm still overly cautious while riding.

My big suggestion is to act as if every car is either going to break the law (run stop signs) or not see you, so you've always got to be on the defense.

Other comments on the map, it's kinda odd feeling, finding the places of people you knew who died in a car crash, and seeing them as a statistic.

I live in Manhattan, grew up in the Midwest, went to college in the South, and have accumulated a couple thousand miles of driving in southern California.

While New York drivers are definitely aggressive, accelerating and braking quickly and making sharp, relatively high-G turns, they are also generally polite, focused, good drivers. They let people in when they need to be let in, they take turns when they need to take turns, they don't run lights, they don't tailgate at high speed, they (usually) use their signals, and they are defensive about pedestrians. They have to be this way to survive the traffic conditions in Manhattan and its freeways: if you don't stay on your game, you get into an accident really quickly. If you get over the aggressive aspect, I think they're some of the better drivers I've encountered.

Southern California, by contrast, always drives me insane. Drivers there just don't seem to think about the implications of what they're doing: they tailgate at 80 MPH, they won't let you in if they don't have to, they definitely won't yield to pedestrians if there's not a stark reason to. I've even seen a collection of cars on I-105 honk maniacally while weaving all over and nearly smashing a poor car that had a blow-out rather than make room for him to get off the road and other drivers to navigate around, even though there was plenty of time to see what was going on, slow down, and work around him. The nearest equivalent I've seen in New York, where a car was stalled out on the FDR (a comically narrow three-lane highway down the east side of Manhattan), had cars slowing down and letting traffic cleanly merge around the disabled automobile.

I don't know why there's such a stark difference. I suspect it has to do with a mixture of west coast drivers driving more, and therefore feeling more comfortable in their cars, combined with wider roads, higher speed limits, and fewer pedestrians. But I think both that New York drivers get a bad rap, and at least southern Californian drivers get an overly good score, when people discuss west- v. east-coast drivers.

I was never such a violent hateful douchebag as I was when living in DC (nova) and driving everywhere. It's something in the roads I'm telling you.

Being a rider before I left the Bay Area, it's kind of spooky to look at Highway 9, 84 to La Honda, and Summit road. You can literally see the yellows in the corners, and looking at the map, I can see many of those corners in my mind's eye.

That said, if you spend some time around Hwy 9 on a summer weekend, it shouldn't surprise you that the accident rate is high. If you don't ride like those people, your risk will not mimic the statistics.