US road deaths increased by more than 10% in 2021 | Hacker News Reader

US road deaths increased by more than 10% in 2021

arstechnica.com

25 pointskristianp38 comments

My personal observation: Drivers in my state are legendary for being bad/aggressive drivers. That being said, I have never seen the level of aggressive anti-social driving that I saw in 2021. I expect bad road decorum in my state, but it was shockingly bad in 2021.

My suspicion is that traffic was really curtailed in 2020 when everyone was at home and it opened up the roads a lot more than people were used to. People then got used to roads being a lot more open and started to drive to suit them.

> Deaths on rural interstates and urban arterial roads increased by 15 percent. And local and urban collector road deaths went up by 20 percent, belying the idea of "Vision Zero."

> It was risky to be a driver, passenger, motorcyclist, pedestrian, or cyclist in 2021, as deaths in each category went up by 12, 9, 9, 13, and 5 percent, respectively, year over year.

What I get from this is that being a pedestrian on a local road is becoming increasingly dangerous. It's a shame that pedestrians have been so low on the totem pole when it comes to safety in the US, despite being one of the most environmental and economical ways to travel.

I'd love to bring in discussion about how the US needs to change its transportation infrastructure, but I think that horse has been beaten to death here.

Anecdotally, I have noticed other drivers are getting worse. What I've seen primarily is that everyone is driving inattentively. There are SO MANY people on their phones or even watching movies on tablets while "driving". The biggest giveaway is poor lane-keeping and signal usage, which is epidemic at least here in Texas.

People in the US are already horrible drivers by global standards, but they've certainly gotten worse in the last two years. Unfortunately, if you're one of the few people that actually pays attention while driving, not only do you notice this worsening, the fact that's its entirely by selfish choice makes you even more livid than you generally are when driving surrounded by imbeciles.

We desperately need to have actual licensing standards in this country and curtail car usage by people who should not be driving, as well as enforce distracted driving laws we already have on the books.

This also opens up the terrifying prospect that the calculus of level 5 autonomy changes not by way of self driving ai getting better so much as by human ability getting worse.

American roads are just badly designed from a safety standpoint. They're often too wide and flat which incentivizes faster travel than the posted speed limit, lots of streets (called stroads by Strong Towns) have constant entry/exit activity which means more points of conflict, and to top it all off we have so many signs and markers which confuse people. Basically, it's a perfect set of conditions for a bad experience driving.

That's all true but didn't get markedly worse during the pandemic/2021, and miles driven dropped.

> and miles driven dropped.

This is what has exacerbated the issue of our roads being designed badly. With fewer drivers on the road, there is less congestion. Congestion encourages slower driving and makes people pay more attention. If there isn't anyone else on the road, the perceived risk of speeding and negligent driving goes down, inducing this kind of behavior.

Anecdotally, in the last year it seems I run into a lot more distracted drivers on their phones. Generally when I see someone driving erratically, not maintaining speed, swerving, etc, I later notice they are heads down on a phone, sometimes even watching a video.

I wondered if this was an international pattern, and the UK shows the opposite: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casua...

People going out less => less crashes for us.

Lots of confounding factors. Increased dependence on phones during lockdowns, increased distracted driving? Out of practice driving and commuting? More post-Covid people behind the wheel with impaired attention?

Absolutely this…. I started riding a motorcycle last year in a small coastal city in Southern California, and the number of local street incidents has been noticeable to say the least. Streets traditionally safe for cyclists, two wheel motorists and pedestrians have become more dangerous, and the phone distraction component is a huge factor in this.

Also, the pandemic caused untold amounts of stress and driving is a great way to let off steam - yet also induces more stress - vicious circle.

"Motor Mania"[1] from 1950 is just as applicable 70 years later.

That being said, you don't see the same trend in e.g. the Netherlands; from [2] (which also has a chart from 2000):

   2019 - 661 deaths
   2020 - 610 (-51)
   2021 - 582 (-28)

So I don't know what's different about the US which causes this uptick in traffic deaths. We got COVID, and the associated stress, and distracted driving due to phones, and all these things. And the many differences in driving culture, road design, etc. have remained identical in the last 3 years.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwPSIb3kt_4

[2]: https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/nieuws/2022/15/minder-verkeersdoden...

Bit of a wildcard suggestion, but I wonder if it's "fatalism".

The pandemic triggered a real split between people keen to take more precautions and people rejecting the concept of precautions altogether. If you're embracing your freedom not to wear a mask, why not embrace your freedom not to wear a seatbelt?

> 42,915 people killed in crashes

That's about an eighth of the number of people killed by COVID.

There are many millions of car accidents every year, with less than 1% resulting in death. The most important factor in fatal accidents is the speed at which the crash occurred. In the city, traffic density often prevents fast driving, regardless of speed limit. Less traffic means people can drive faster. This doesn't seem like a mystery to me.

So problem solved I guess this guy figured out why it happens. We're done here!

what about in the city, cars hitting pedestrians?

Speed is even more important there, anything over 25 mph should not be allowed in areas where people live. Of course that is not the case even in cities with a clear political will towards walkability the I Need To Drive Fast mentality often wins or at least is thw default

yep, very annoying where we live

"Alcohol consumption rose among adults over age 30 by 14% during the pandemic, with a 41% increase in women heavily drinking" - https://www.cedars-sinai.org/blog/pandemic-drinking.html

Maybe we should've shut down liquor stores during the pandemic.

Alcohol is one of the few abused substances where the withdrawal effects can kill you: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium_tremens

I’ve seen opinion pieces blame the surge in road deaths on an increase in anti-social behavior because of the pandemic. People were laid off, avoiding family & friends, and stuck inside a lot. All things that aren’t good for mental health. So, that reasoning makes sense to me, but I don’t know how you’d ever prove it.

I really wonder about alcohol and drugs. When I was a paramedic, I recall about 80% of accidents I encountered were alcohol related, though not everyone whether ended up getting charged for one reason or another.

To be fair, that was in a rural area where there just aren't that many cars on the road.

But I know that first lockdown really set up a lot of people to increase their drinking.

Just anecdotally I have noticed that I've been getting tailgated a lot more in the last couple of years. Just the other day I was doing 70 in a 55 MPH zone only to have an SUV zoom up and then swerve around me doing what must have been 90.

Agreed on this and it predates Covid, though has gotten worse. Suvs, cheaper sports cars, and above all, pickup trucks, are the models I see most often. It's worse when driving our prius, but happens in any vehicle.

It's as if certain group has learned to drive by driving as fast as possible until they reach a hurdle, then tailgating that hurdle until they go faster or get out of the way. Speed, speed limit and road conditions aren't a consideration; only this asshole that's in my way.

Sorry if this is too political but we should consider Tucker Carlson's take: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGb748VOcYU In videos like this, he's not being conservative but simply making an observation or asking a question that liberals don't like. The theory basically is that minority traffic deaths are increasing because the police are less willing to enforce traffic law with them.

> In videos like this, he's not being conservative but simply making an observation or asking a question that liberals don't like.

Isn't that his whole thing? Asking weasely questions instead of making statements?

I only skimmed the video as I can't stand Tucker Carlson (sorry), but I think it's possibly an interesting point. As I pointed out in another comment, traffic deaths in the Netherlands decreased in 2020 and 2021, and many factors such as differences in road design stayed identical, and we had the COVID-factor too.

Policing in the US, however, did change quite a bit, which happened to coincide with COVID and it's a factor that didn't exist in the Netherlands.

Needs more data though: how are things in other countries? And how much did traffic enforcement decrease in the US? And how much of the traffic victims are from minorities? I'm not convinced this is a significant factor yet, but I think it's good to explore. Phrasings such as "question that liberals don't like" probably doesn't help make your point btw.

The increase did disproportionately hit Black people but people who study these things think the main factors were the economic impact of the pandemic and underinvestment in infrastructure for minority communities [1].

For the several years before the pandemic traffic fatalities also disproportionately affected Black and some other minority communities.

[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/traffic-deaths-increased-bla...

As the article says, there was something called a pandemic in 2020. So yeah, more crashes when more people are on the road. Shocking, I know.

"The rise in road deaths began with the pandemic in 2020. Despite a big reduction in the number of miles we drove, road deaths went up that year—8 percent year-over-year, after a period of gently declining traffic fatalities."

That was my first thought, too: there was less driving during lockdowns, so perhaps this is a rebound effect?

But it's not: U.S. miles-driven did reduce in 2020, but road deaths increased during that year.

The article links to a previous 2021 article[1] about this.

"Thanks to the pandemic, Americans drove 13 percent fewer miles in 2020 than they did the year before. But the move to telework and lockdowns has not made our roads any safer. In fact, our roads got a lot more dangerous last year, according to preliminary data collected by the National Safety Council. The council estimates that 42,060 people were killed in crashes, an 8 percent increase from 2019. The rise looks even more shocking when normalized—it rose from 1.2 to 1.49 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, a 24 percent increase."

[1] - https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/03/traffic-deaths-rose-8-p...

Road deaths in the US increased during the pandemic (2020 over 2019) despite fewer miles driven.

And it seems 2021 then saw another 10% jump in the number of vehicle deaths.

Is this a matter of people exercising their freedom, and making choices based on personal responsibility? I mean, in the USA, we have freedom. Sometimes people choose to behave in a risky manner due to market forces, we have to accept that everyone has the God Given Right to choose or not choose, it's their personal responsibility.

I want to have the freedom to go to the grocery store without the risk of being run over by someone exercising their "freedom" to drive like a maniac.

Sorry, but I think my freedom of not being killed outweighs your freedom to get somewhere 2 minutes faster.

Where will this end? I mean, wearing a mask to the grocery store is a grave, grave imposition, on the level of certain genocidal historical events. I'm not at all sure of your assertion of your minor freedom there is valid.

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