You can change the driving culture and mindset, starting by designing roads that generally cause folks to drive slower, implemented at next upgrade. You can more strictly enforce driving laws, especially things like speeding or being distracted. Revamp curves that have lots of accidents. Offer larger access to public transportation.
Save for the interstate highway infrastructure, most roads are done at the state or county level anyway. If you simply start doing this stuff a roads are upgraded (some can be done now and might bring in money), you aren't really spending lots more. You can change the driving culture and mindset, starting by designing roads that generally cause folks to drive slower, implemented at next upgrade
You mean you can get voted out of office for implementing these policies.
Now, some folks will be upset they can't go as fast and stuff, but they get used to it.
Some things aren't even obvious to folks, like roads designed to decrease speed. Generally, they are narrower rather than wider. I'm not sure folks will put the two together. Roundabouts? Well-timed streetlights, so long as you are going the speed limit? The first folks complain about, the second gets folks to go the speed limit.
The thing I'd personally implement that would get outcry is increased drivers education, which would increase cost. Id' have everyone take an actual course unless they have previously held a license in recent years. I think some exception could probably be made for farm families (special license for equipment and off-road vehicles) and quell the outcry a little bit.
Probably... There is nothing reasonably stopping the US from being nicer, only it's voters.
Maybe the problem is that US voters don't care much about the body count (probably an issue in most Americans politices).
Most countries are fairly homogenous, which lends itself to a singular-ish mindset and culture. The US is not really one country, it's a melting pot (remember that word from social studies?) of many different cultures and ideas. That's one of the big reasons why we can't really be compared to any other country on many topics. Every locale is different, in many cases fundamentally, and that's part of the point of the Federal-State system we have.
I see this stated a lot by folks in Europe vs. the US discussions, but having visited both I'm pretty baffled by it. Switzerland has four national languages - hop on a train for an hour or two and you may go from French to German areas. The folks in Paris would laugh at the idea that they've got the same culture as Provence. Same with northern vs. southern Italy, Moscow vs. Siberia, etc.
Note that this makes getting your license fairly expensive (on the order of 1500 to 2000 euro), some parents save up for this like American parents save for their childrens college, others simply work a part time job or wait until they've finished college to get the license. I feel that the way the US is structured this alone makes it infeasible to implement these requirements, you can't be 30 and not have a license in US suburbs.
The €1500 cost would be meaningless in the US for most people. The median parents purchase a vehicle for their children directly or otherwise assist them in acquiring one, at far greater cost. That level of license cost wouldn't have any impact for the average person.
Where those variations would have a huge impact, is for poor people, overwhelmingly black and hispanic in the US. Any attempt to implement that licensing approach would be called out as being racist or otherwise discriminatory. I'm not exaggerating or making light of it, I'm being dead serious. That's exactly what would occur. I'll leave it to others to debate whether it would in fact be racist, I'm sure some (most?) of that opinion is determined by one's position in society and how each person feels discriminated against or not.
The US has a substantial bifurcation between the top ~60% and the bottom ~40%, roughly speaking. The top 60% is overwhelmingly white + asian. The gap between access to quality driving instruction / education, the ability to pay licensing costs of €1500, etc. would separate along that division (ie white/asian and black/hispanic). It would impact poorer people in a significant way, and barely impact non poor people.
If the US were to adopt a stricter approach, to convince everyone that it was fair, it'd be necessary to put meaningful resources into providing greater driving education opportunities to poorer people, and probably adjusting the licensing cost based on household income (if your family makes $30,000 the fee is $250; if your family makes $90,000 the fee is $1500 or whatever).