Welcome to the Daily 5 report for Wednesday, April 9.
It’s not a story we look forward to publishing. The grim annual U.S. road fatalities report from NHTSA yields the statistics that remind us the fundamental risks of driving a motor vehicle. The 2024 figures were improved from 2023 with a drop of 3.8 percent but accidents still killed 39,345 people, and countless more were injured on the nation’s roads last year. Perhaps the more relevant statistic — fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled — fell to 1.20 in 2024 from 1.26 in 2023.
The numbers were the most improved in the U.S. since the COVID-19 pandemic but still nowhere near the lows set in 2014 when 32,744 people died on the nation’s roads with 1.08 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled.
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How automotive stocks are performing since tariff announcement. Click here for real time figures
It’s perplexing how these tragic statistics remain so elevated even with the remarkable new safety technologies being installed in most new vehicles over the last several years. But as we’ve reported over the last four years, reckless and impaired driving has negated the technological progress made in vehicle safety. So NHTSA is pushing for more enforcement of traffic safety laws.
NHTSA Chief Counsel Peter Simshauser said in a press release: “To reduce fatalities further, (the U.S. Department of Transportation) is working closely to partner with the law enforcement community to enhance traffic enforcement on our roads, including speeding, impairment, distraction, and lack of seatbelt use.”
Meanwhile, tariffs continue to dominate the headlines today — President Donald Trump paused most reciprocal tariffs on trading partners for 90 days, but sectoral tariffs, such as those on autos, still apply, as John Irwin reported this afternoon.
We also have three excellent reports on how the automotive tariffs work. This piece by Pete Bigelow explains why auto sales forecasts are changing following the strong first-quarter U.S. results.
Another story by Hannah Lutz details which vehicles face tariffs and which ones don’t, complete with graphics on where the vehicles are produced. Lutz also produced this fascinating explainer that follows the tariff journey of a piston crossing the Canadian, U.S. and Mexican borders for vehicle assembly in North America.
Finally, here’s a first for automotive retail finance: One-fifth of all new-vehicle borrowers during the first quarter took out 84-month loans, a record, John Huetter reported today, citing Edmunds. A year earlier, 16 percent of new-vehicle loans ran that long. In the pre-pandemic first quarter of 2019, only 13 percent of borrowers agreed to an 84-month term, Huetter’s story says.
That’s it for now. Have a great rest of your day.
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— Philip Nussel, online editor
