Kottke has this video showing a 2009 car colliding with a 1959 car.
Chatgpt claims: According to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in the United States has decreased from 5.39 in 1960 to 1.11 in 2019.
My cousin remembers the experience in the 1930s of riding with her father driving. He was a reckless driver; she says he had "road rage" before the name.
For those who don't remember the days before the interstate, and who no longer regularly drive in rural areas, two-lane roads were standard. In hilly areas, such as upstate New York, that meant a lot of blind curves, and no-passing zones. On long drives, like that from Maryland to Minneapolis, or even North Fenton to Ithaca, those zones were frustrating to those of us who are impatient. Find yourself behind a car whose driver was old, or cautious, or law-abiding (those were more common in those days than now), on a road with lots of traffic coming towards you, with a number of curves or hills, you'd get more and more frustrated, each time you swerved over the middle line and saw a car coming, or ran out of the dashed passing line and into the double white line.
Eventually either the slowboat in front of you would turn off, or you'd take the chance of passing when you really shouldn't.
