US median monthly rent and US traffic fatalities have, between 2015 and 2022, risen together at a correlation of 0.860. Americans are paying more to live somewhere and dying more often trying to get there. Both trends are, in their own ways, about a country that has forgotten how to make its infrastructure safer as it scales.
US median monthly rent rose from $900 in 2015 to over $1,300 by 2022, driven by supply shortages and inflation. US traffic fatalities climbed from 35,500 to over 42,500 in the same window, driven by heavier vehicles and reduced enforcement. Both trends reflect the same decade of compounding American failures in housing policy and road safety, with no causal link between the two but a shared context of infrastructure neglect.
Eight years of two lines rising together can describe two parallel failures of the same country's ability to house and move itself safely. The rent and the fatality share no mechanism. Both are consequences of the same inattention.
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Want to learn more about why correlations like “US traffic fatalities” vs “U.S. median monthly rent” don't prove causation? Read our guide to statistical thinking.
