Germany:
In fact, the annual fatality rate (3.2 per billion km in 2004)
averaging almost 50,000 vehicles per day on any given segment.
A couple of notes about traffic reports: sometimes the "traffic report" may include information that has nothing to do with traffic such as emergency alerts, police bulletins, etc. Also, if you have a German rental car with a cassette or CD player, don't be surprised if your Falco tape or disc is interrupted by reports of a Stau somewhere-- German radio tuners continue to monitor the last-selected radio station even when a tape or CD is being played. Radio stations broadcast a special tone at the start of traffic reports which causes the tuner to switch the audio from the tape or CD to the radio so that you can hear the information. Traffic reports use one of several terms to describe varying levels of congestion: "Stau" usually means a colossal traffic jam where you'll probably get to know the people in the cars around you, "stockender Verkehr" indicates the only slightly more tolerable stacking or slow-and-go type traffic, while "dichter Verkehr" or "zähfliesender Verkehr" denotes the hardly-noteworthy heavy or sluggish but moving traffic.
http://gettingaroundgermany.home.att.net/autobahn.htm
US
According to USDOT statistics, the nation’s freeways and expressways had 8.6 fatalities per billion miles traveled in 1998. Data for toll roads from IBTTA show a fatality rate of 6.2 per billion miles traveled.
http://www.reason.org/ps274.html
Apology: I was wrong. I remembered some years ago that Germany had some twice the accident rate as the US.
Having said that, a lot goes into a fatality besides the design of a road. Driver training before the accident, and average distance to emergency rooms after the accident would be a couple of factors that would seem to be important.
It sounds even more sad, because the announcement usually goes something like "5 kilometers stockender Verkehr." The biggest I ever hit was about 18 miles, but I've heard announcements for much more on the radio during snow storms, over 50 miles.
In that case you can get off onto the secondary roads, but the fatality rate for those is higher than in the US.
BTW, you can turn those reports off.