I think most of it can be attributed to cellphone usage while driving.
And now that most drivers choose to use their smartphones as GPS rather than a dedicated GPS device, I think it's going to get much worse.
Smart phone penetration in the US has been above 75% for many years now, so you'd have to explain why there's a jump in fatalities now but wasn't as smart phone penetration went from 0% to 75%.
Secondly, this data should be controlled for miles driven. Otherwise a growing population and a growing economy can be misconstrued as roadways becoming more dangerous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...
It used to be that you could tell from a distance who was talking on their phone while driving. They would drift off their lane and correct randomly. At least while talking you have some % of your attention on driving, if low. While texting or interacting with the device's screen you have just about 0 attention left for other tasks. And you often don't even realize it...
There must be some data specific to distracted driving you'd think...
EDIT: Some data:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951952/
http://www.fleetfinancials.com/article/story/2011/09/5-year-...
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/distracted-dr...
You have my permission to use this as your next start-up idea.
Finally if all else fails, at night you can see the reflection of light from their phone.
In LA I would guess something like 75% of drivers use their phones at red lights. It makes the delay of cars starting to move when a light turns green super annoying.
Unfortunately Mazdas are the only economy cars that seem to care about this. For many others, it's a laggy touchscreen well below the vents.
Very happy with the old fashioned tactile controls on my 2012 VW.
Driving while distracted is a huge problem. Denial of that problem by people who have it is in itself also a huge problem. Apparently current levels of laws and penalties aren't sufficient to deter it, so something stronger may be needed.
Awful controls and interfaces in cars are also a problem. The number of gadgets and displays and distractions of all sorts in modern vehicles is disturbing. Laggy touchscreens are a prime example. Speak-out-loud systems and voice activated systems with poor speech recognition are other weak areas. I find it amazing that when cars are probably the second most expensive thing most of us ever buy, we accept such crude and poorly designed control systems, but there seems to be little concern in the industry because they're all just about as bad as each other. Again, at some point stronger regulation may be needed.
That said, in this particular case, we had plenty of campaigning when existing laws were introduced here in the UK, and that doesn't seem to have been very effective. The near-total lack of enforcement means those who find using their phone while driving convenient continue to do so, despite the mountain of evidence about how dangerous it is. Worse, because we didn't also ban hands-free use, despite the mountain of evidence that it is almost as bad as hand-held phone use in terms of impairing driver performance, vendors of hands-free kits were literally putting up six foot high stands at the entrances to major stores the week after the ban came in with captions like "Stay safe -- go hands-free!" all over them.
If we're going to solve this one, I suspect what we need is a combination of education and enforcement, both much stronger than we have seen so far. The number of people I come across online who maintain that they drive while using a phone all the time and are still perfectly safe is genuinely alarming.
Texting while driving wasn't such an epidemic with T9, which had much societal adoption. I admit the sheer volume has gone up since then, but personally I recall it being relatively easy to enter a message only having to look at the screen occasionally to verify input.
A touchscreen requires one to look at the screen to make input. This insidiously creeps into one's OODA loop, sapping attention in a way that felt much harder to be aware of (since the "atomic task" of entering a letter now has a variable delay).
Likewise, I've done two cross country round trips with a handheld GPS unit (Garmin 60CSx), which my right hand operated just fine, including shifting. I wasn't using it for routing, but a "you are here map" with crow-flies distance. Most critical use was in denser cityish areas, that require more shifting and navigating traffic, and I still never felt distracted. Meanwhile even just starting Waze seems like a massive distraction that I'd rather only do while stopped - nevermind navigating any of its modal dialogs.
Based on experience, the most likely explanation is texting or voice calls. When I got a new car with bluetooth calling, all of a sudden I was fumbling a lot less. A call is now about the same level of distraction as having a passenger or 2.
Texting however, I have no idea. Maybe something that moves texting to voice, but I haven't seen anything actually make that work. And, it's distracting enough that I just don't text while driving: sending ETA updates or w/e isn't worth risking my life over.
Most studies that have actually tested it have found that talking with someone on a phone, even if hands free, is much more distracting than talking to a passenger.
A big factor is that a passenger is much more likely to be aware of road and traffic conditions and stop the conversation during situations where the driver needs to pay extra attention to driving.
If you have a few studies that show more than that, I would be glad to check it out.
Here was a recent study that was pretty interesting: https://news.illinois.edu/blog/view/6367/204502
Here's an older one: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081201081917.h...
This. My car insurance went up 25% recently b/c of this trend. That's right, OTHER PEOPLES behavior is costing me money. I guess thats how insurance works though right. I mean the insurance companies need to be guaranteed to make money right???
At least on average anyway. Or they will stop writing insurance policies.
It'd be more expensive for the people that did carry it, but it'd be a large business.
And of course, in many states there is the option to post a bond to prove ability to compensate.