This chart comes from a great post about the folly of insurance rankings for US states over at Strong Towns. (See for example, City Pages recently using these kinds of stats on their blog. They write: “Out of the 200 cities included in the study, which is based on crash data, Minneapolis ranks 90th. St. Paul, meanwhile, ranks 103rd.”)

When thinking about this, it’s important to distinguish between deaths and accidents. Small accidents are good, in a sense, which is why speeds should be kept low in urban areas. As Chuck concludes: “If someone tries to tell you it is more dangerous living in a congested city than driving the wide open roads, tell them they are dangerously uninformed.”