A recent Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report, "Vital Signs: Motor Vehicle Injury Prevention — United States and 19 Comparison Countries," as well as an Economist Magazine analysis, "America's Road-safety Record is the Worst in the Rich World," indicated that, despite huge investments in traffic safety programs and safety engineering, the U.S. has, by a significant margin, the highest per capita traffic fatality rate among peer countries. When miles travelled were taken into account, the U.S. was safer than Japan, Slovenia, and Belgium in 2013 (the most recent year with comparable data).  U.S. traffic death rates fell by 31 percent between 2000 and 2013, while peer countries, during that same period, reduced their crash rate an average of 55.1 percent. The high traffic casualty rates in the U.S. can be explained, in large part, by the high per capita annual vehicle miles traveled (approximately double most of our peer nations) and the focus on design and construction of high-speed roadways.