Road safety is much better in Europe than the US. The US seems to have a problem with driver education. I actually think the prevalence of automatics is part of the problem as they present themselves as a big toy and convenient luxury rather than as a powerful machine that comes with a lot of responsibility.

I wondered if the design of the roads themselves plays a big part, but I no longer think it is very significant here. In South Africa the roads are basically built to British standards but they have even worse safety than the US. The big difference I noticed there is the extreme variety of vehicles on the road. You get modern, powerful cars just like in Europe, but also rattly old rust buckets that would have failed their MOT test in the UK years ago. This variety makes navigating the roads much more difficult.