Its a pretty similar statistic for most rural states.

Consider that the population is lower but the ratio of people driving is much higher. Less cities, more people have to commute 30-60 minutes, etc.

Part of it is poor infrastructure, yeah(the other southern rural states with similar stats track a better record comparatively based on quality of infrastructure by my own personal anecdote of having driven/lived in them), but it's just predominantly the ratio of drivers to non drivers as the key factor.

The point I’m trying to make is that absolute risk numbers are far more useful than stating relative risk, especially once we get below the average person’s acceptable risk tolerance. Saying “this country is xx times safer than this country” can be misleading.

For example, if we consider a hypothetical country that has 1 traffic death per 100,000 vehicles you could make the statement that, “the Netherlands has 6x more traffic deaths than hypothetical country!” It would make the Netherlands seem like a dangerous place to live, but I’d wager that the vast majority of people would feel perfectly comfortable with the idea of being in traffic in the Netherlands.