1/4th the population of the US and yet only 1/14th the number of deaths on the road.
Deaths on the highways in Germany amount to 270 people or so. In the US it's something like 5000.
Speed kills?
You're comparing total numbers of deaths while traveling on highways, which means you need to also compare total passenger miles traveled on highways. Using per capita is utterly absurd. I'm not saying that you're automatically wrong, but your current argument statement is incoherent.
AND ALSO, 40% of the autobahn has speed limits, trucks are always limited, and advisory limits apply everywhere according to https://www.deutschland.de/en/topic/life/germany-and-the-aut...
The link also says "In practice, this means that there are only a few stretches of road where you can really drive at unlimited speeds during the day."
AND ALSO, speed limits aside, what's the actual average traveling speed difference between the two countries for passenger vehicles? The same link says the average in Germany is about 78mph. Ask someone living in the US if that's significantly faster than here.
Interestingly, the same report shows a reduction of 12.1% in total road deaths between 2010 and 2016, while the US had an increase of 13.5% over the same period.
I'm scared to even list the US's increase pedestrian deaths caused by drivers. No regard for human life at all.
Source: https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/docs/irtad-road...
Absent some indication that the two countries put the same number of people in each vehicle on average, it needs to be passenger miles, not vehicle miles, and for the purposes of this particular thread, it needs to be specifically highway miles and then probably further clustered by speed.
Because the parent comment's statement was some potshot "autobahn go fast" snark about highway speed limits. We all know (I hope) that a huge percentage of vehicle incidents happen at intersections and on country roads, which the US has more of by virtue of its geographic spread and which are not designed particularly safely here. And we all (I hope) know that americans behave antisocially and are bad at implementing long-term plans that would improve society for everyone. Those are rightly given.
On a recent 750+ mile each way road trip, I averaged 70 mph on a door-to-door wall-clock basis (start the timer, drive 750 miles, stop the timer, divide). That was with three short stops one way and two on the way back, and we got passed by almost no one.
That's significantly higher than average speed on highways in western Washington. The nominal speed limit is 60 and average speed is about 70 mph. Once you get east into the mountains where the limit goes up to 70, the average rises as well (during good conditions, anyway). Many more people drive around the western side of the state than on that rural section of I-90, though.