The cause was easy enough to identify: Data parsed by Kuhls and her colleagues showed that drivers were speeding more, on highways and on surface streets, and plowing through intersections with an alarming frequency. Conversely, seatbelt use was down, resulting in thousands of injuries to unrestrained drivers and passengers. After a decade of steady decline, intoxicated-driving arrests had rebounded to near historic highs.
… The relationship between car size and injury rates is still being studied, but early research on the American appetite for horizon-blotting machinery points in precisely the direction you’d expect: The bigger the vehicle, the less visibility it affords, and the more destruction it can wreak.
I think the problem lies more in initial training and retesting. There is very little mandated training for a task as complex as driving and most training is done on open streets, not under controlled conditions with professional supervision. Furthermore, once you get the lisence, you got it for life just keep paying the fees. No need to retest regardless how the rules of the road change, street design changes, and car technology changes.
I agree for the most part but there is something to be said for the fact that controlled training is never really going to cover all of the details of real world situations. Put simply, a newly licensed driver is always going to suck until they get on the road experience.