There were 1.25 million estimated road fatalities worldwide in 2015, so a 1% blip would amount to 12.5 thousand. So yes this blip represents very real entirely avoidable deaths, as the offset of the traditional downward trend suggests.

Who said anything about worldwide fatalities? Apples and oranges.

"Entirely avoidable" is a strange term in this context. All 1.25 million deaths were technically avoidable, but not without causing significantly worse harm, suffering, and death instead.

We don't actually know what caused the increase, right now we're just speculating.

Now, the NHTSA puts a $6.0 million price tag on the economic value of preventing a US traffic fatality, and based on that figure we prevent as much as we can.