(Excerpt*) There were over 30,000 car-crash deaths in the U.S. in the first nine months of 2021, a 12% surge that marks the largest increase in fatalities since reporting began nearly half a century ago, according to projections released Tuesday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The surge from 2020 is on pace with an increase in traffic on the roads after the pandemic caused a significant drop in vehicle travel, according to the Federal Highway Administration. Pushed higher by risky driving, fatalities have been on the rise throughout the pandemic. They climbed 4.6% in the first nine months of 2020 over the same period from 2019 after several years of decreases, according to NHTSA.
“Since the beginning of the pandemic, what has changed is the behavior of drivers,”said Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association, a nonprofit that represents state and territorial highway safety offices. He points to lack of enforcement on the roads and riskier driver behavior such as speeding, drunken driving, aggressive driving and going without a seat belt. “Everything that you want to see go down in roadway safety has been going up,”he said.
I have another theory. Many of us rarely drove anywhere during most of 2020 and into early 2021 until vaccines became available. That cut into our proficiency as drivers (reaction time, awareness, familiarity with automotive handling and components, etc.) But I’m not disputing the other reasons stated. Beyond that there’s the widespread legalization of marijuana across states. As I understand it, impairment is more difficult to prove / convict on than with alcohol.
*Source - WSJ February 2, 2022. (Sorry, I’ve learned how to share passages from my Kindle subscription, but not how to provide workable links.)
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