Chart assignment

Charts to read and discuss

Read each chart, then answer its questions. Every chart shows its source and date; open it for a table of the numbers and the data to download.

  1. How many complaints does the CFPB get about financial companies each year?
  2. Are U.S. roads getting safer per mile driven?

Chart 1 of 2 · Consumer complaints

How many complaints does the CFPB get about financial companies each year?

The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau received 5.44 million complaints about financial products and companies in 2025, up from 2.73 million in 2024 and 75 times as many as in 2012, its first full year. Nearly all of the growth since then is complaints about credit reports. Complaints aren't verified: the CFPB publishes them without checking the facts, so they show what people report, not how often companies did something wrong. The CFPB added kinds of products until 2014, which explains some of the early rise.

Questions to discuss

  1. In one sentence of your own, what does this chart show?
  2. Find the biggest change or difference in the chart. What might explain it?
  3. Who collected these numbers, and how recent are they? What else would you want to know before drawing a conclusion?

Source: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Consumer Complaint Database (Public domain (U.S. government work; the CFPB publishes the database under CC0)) · Data as of Dec 31, 2025

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Chart 2 of 2 · Road safety

Are U.S. roads getting safer per mile driven?

The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.

In 2024 there were 1.19 deaths for every 100 million miles driven, down from 3.35 in 1980. The lowest rate was 1.08 in 2014; it jumped to 1.34 in 2020, when people drove less but deaths rose. Miles driven are the Federal Highway Administration's estimates.

How to read this chart

Each point is the number of people killed in traffic crashes for every 100 million miles Americans drove that year. Dividing by miles driven turns a count into a rate, so years when people drove more or less can be compared fairly.

Questions to discuss

  1. About what fraction of the 1980 rate is the rate in the latest year?
  2. In 2020 people drove less, but the rate went up. What could explain that?
  3. Why is deaths per mile a fairer way to compare years than the total number of deaths?

Source: NHTSA Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and FHWA Highway Statistics (table VM-2) (Public domain (U.S. government work)) · Data as of Dec 31, 2024

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