Traffic Fatalities Reach 16 Year High | Hacker News Reader

Traffic Fatalities Reach 16 Year High

nhtsa.gov

I and most of the people I've asked all noticed a distinct drop in driver skill after the covid lockdowns lifted. In particular people seem not to be noticing things. They're not noticing the car in their blind spot or that the light has turned green.

Reduced maintenance of vehicles and roads may also be a factor. Although the comment elsewhere about miles driven increasing is probably the biggest factor.

people don't know how to set their mirrors properly, for one. Always assume you're in a blind spot.

I do too, people have become crazy. Distracted and stressed? People seem more pissed off and more likely to take risks.

I've noticed that truck drivers frequently stay in passing lanes while not passing.

I think it's a recent phenomenon, though I can't think of a reason for the change.

Shortage of drivers. Labor shortages are never good for quality.

Because they’re idiots.

Since I came back to driving trucks I have noticed a distinct lack of simple common courtesy and professionalism amongst my fellow drivers. My working theory is that all the “old hands” have retired and the current crop of drivers don’t know what it’s like to get yelled at on the CB for doing stupid stuff.

Plus they will let you train new drivers with only six months experience which isn’t enough. And the multitude of people from other lands where driving rules are basically “the largest vehicle has the right of way” who I see all the time running up a few feet off a car’s bumper going 80+ mph.

I don’t even think I’m falling victim to the “get off my grass” syndrome, these people are just idiots.

I wonder if post-COVID brain fog is a contributing factor. We know people 65+ are hit harder by COVID, and that same demographic had the biggest increase in accidents.

that's a stretch. Rather people above 65 who stop doing things regularly lose skills faster than younger people, probably.

Strong Towns has been pushing the narrative that this may be a result of roads becoming less congested, therefore eliminating a naturally occurring traffic calming measure.

I find the narrative reasonably persuasive but I’m not 100% convinced. It does make slightly more sense than “everyone suddenly became psychotic” post-COVID. But FAA numbers lend some credence to the “Americans are suddenly just angry people” idea.

Vox has picked up on the congestion-as-traffic-calming idea, so perhaps it is becoming mainstream.

https://www.vox.com/23178764/florida-us19-deadliest-pedestri...

The rise in traffic deaths predate the pandemic. I do think that to some degree less traffic does encourage more dangerous driving, but I suspect it's not the whole (or even main) cause.

I suspect a large part of this is the change in the kind of cars that are on the road. Trucks and SUVs predominate in the US now, and sedans are a rare sight these days. More mass = more deadly. Also importantly trucks and SUVs nowadays are obsessed with an "aggressive stance" - i.e., tall hoods which increases impact injuries to pedestrians, and also reduce cockpit visibility.

This has been known to road safety activists for years, but the mainstream media is just starting to catch on. See for example this SUV that has a full 16-foot blind spot in front of the car: https://twitter.com/PickledEntropy/status/155387204384156876...

tl;dr: American car purchases have trended towards heavier cars with deadlier geometry and worse driver visibility, which IMO is a huge contributor to these stats.

[edit] For some additional color, in 2014 SUV sales overtook sedan sales for the first time [1] and by 2019 SUVs were out-selling sedans by 2:1. [2]

[1] https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-autos-suvs-c...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/business/suv-sales-best-s....

Also, to fully drive home the "deadlier geometry" side of things, see the difference here between a 1994 Toyota Tacoma [3], curb weight 3100 lbs, and a 2022 Toyota Tacoma [4], curb weight 4500 lbs:

[3] https://images.app.goo.gl/rjU2pu3g7Wqv9o6P9

[4] https://images.app.goo.gl/TcKRSYybd1f1NzkR8

The frontend height difference, as well as the sheer mass difference, is stupendous. This is what's causing people to die en masse on roads.

You can clearly see the jump in the pandemic in fatalities as compared to miles traveled.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_...

I don't think it's SUVs. Most likely stimulus checks and unemployment bonus payments allowed more people to afford vehicles for the first time.

In my area there is always a huge rash of traffic accidents around "tax time."

The Onion has been lampooning this trend recently

[1] https://www.theonion.com/conscientious-suv-shopper-just-want...

[2] https://www.theonion.com/new-ford-f-450-comes-with-shotgun-i...

But Americans have decided that they need to drive an entire apartment around to get groceries, and auto manufacturers have been happily servicing them with subprime loans.

> a rare sight these days

Rare sight? Where do you live around if you don't mind me asking.

They also create blind spots for other drivers. I’ve noticed this when turning left and a huge truck or SUV is on the other side, it’s hard to tell if there’s a car coming because they’re blocking part of the view.

Given that the fatalities in 2020 went up a lot among black Americans, barely budged among white ones and went down a lot among Asian Americans, I consider the above theory to be total bunk (unless somehow only black Americans were benefitting from congestion reduction, while white Americans were as stuck in traffic as ever).

https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

Given that racial patterns of changes in traffic fatalities match very closely those in homicides since 2020 (where, again, rate of homicide victimization went up a lot among black Americans, and only mildly among whites), I’d rather suspect common reason behind both.

That's an interesting find, did not know this was tracked. It also says there was a big increase in fatalites for all other races that were not black, white, asian, or american indian.

I drive upstate NY and notice the flow of traffic is usually 20 mph over the limit even on narrow winding roads.

And even when I give in and drive at these uncomfortably high speeds I’m constantly tailgated, even in the slow lane.

In my area I noticed that speed early in the pandemic was borderline excessive at times. Now it seems it's mostly back to normal here. Most the issue I'm seeing are around bad judgement or distracted driving.

The 101 in the peninsula area has the opposite problem: people seem to be scared to get even close to the posted speed limit. You can see the front line of a bunch of cars all blocking everyone behind them regularly for no apparent reason. Other than stupidity and incompetence that is.

Less enforcement, more cellphone use, more unlicensed drivers.

I'm actually seeing more enforcement in my area. Although I hear some cities are reducing/banning some traffic enforcement.

That’s good. Traffic enforcement doesn’t work like people think it does. It doesn’t always have a protective effect. When it does, the effect fades rapidly as time and distance increases from the enforcement. Getting rid of traffic enforcement allows more productive uses of law enforcement.

What makes roads safer is better engineering, better technology, and education.

I did my dissertation on this. I was surprised at the amount of tautological reasoning when I reviewed literature: traffic enforcement good because traffic enforcement, or speeding bad because speeding.

No, something’s bad when it causes harm, and something’s good when it has a net benefit, and the published traffic-safety research focused on laws and enforcement is too often shoddy.

My city has rarely enforced traffic laws for years. It’s not too much of an issue while driving, because everyone is comfortably cruising at 10-20mph over, and the roads can reasonably handle that. But it’s a big issue in places with pedestrians because people use the same “always go 15mph over” rule even on 25mph roads in residential neighborhoods.

"What makes roads safer is better engineering, better technology, and education."

In my mind, education is by far the biggest issue today. Most people have no clue about vehicle dynamics, or they think bad stuff only happens to other people. Like you said, speed itself isn't necessarily bad. But people speeding around a turn have near zero chance at avoiding a bad outcome if there's some obstacle in the road - they've never tried to slam the brakes on while turning, and/or they think there couldn't possibly be a disabled car, a person, a deer, etc around that blind turn.

Technology has certainly helped improve survival. I think it is helping to prevent some accidents to too. I think we still need some refinement on some of the newer tech and/or better education on how to use it. I think sometimes people rely on the tech too much, like autopilot. I think many people aren't fully ready to take over if autopilot has an issue. I had two friends using autopilot tell me it slammed on their brakes at an overpass shadow. Now, they didn't go into detail about the time to recovery, but I'm guessing for at least some people it's significant if they aren't paying attention because they trust the system too much.

As for engineering, there's probably a lot that could be done. I haven't seen many changes to road design beyond adding stop signs, lights, textured pavement on turns, etc. I'm guessing it's cost prohibitive, similar to how educational changes are socially prohibitive.

Licensing to drive seems like a scam, but a minor outpost on the scheme of scams great car-culture scams of car culture itself (the crime of jaywalking, pedestrian hostile roads, towns, and cities, suburban sprawl, all on top of the ridiculous cost of cars themselves, SUVs (cover a basic truck chassis and mark it up), SUVs classified as light trucks to avoid emissions standards...and on, and on, and on.)

>Licensing to drive seems like a scam

How so? Don't you want to see some competency exhibited by people before they drive[1]?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZITP93pqtdQ

Only semi related but maybe weird enough to count as a worthy HN comment?

Step 1. Open Snapchat (make a burner account if you need to)

Step 2. Open the “Snap Map” - stylized pin icon on the bottom left

Step 3. Pan and zoom to your neighborhood/city and click a colorful region

Step 4. (In my experience) see loads of people obviously recording videos while operating motor vehicles.

I know what you’re thinking - it could be a passenger taking the video; when that is even remotely a possibility, I don’t count that.

Just now it took 36s to find video evidence of an operator using their phone while driving. But I don’t count because the vehicle was at a stop sign.

37s to find a video of a cyclist videoing while cycling. Less severe of an issue, but it is scary for pedestrians when a cyclist is hurtling at you and not looking.

10s later I find three separate videos from three separate cars; differentiated by the instrument cluster and steering wheel top grip.

TLDR in less than a minute I can find fresh video evidence of distracted driving. I have also almost been run over by someone who was texting (or perhaps Snapping).

But ultimately, none of that is a root cause or anything new, just a “fun” observation about how disgustingly reckless some drivers are.

The important part that social media companies focus on is making sure they cannot be held liable. Narrowing in on ensuring their app is minimally legally and financially at fault for these phenomena. Like that is the utmost corporate priority. If you extrapolate these values, it is not crazy to think humanity's future is grim.

I see gta level stupid driving nearly every highway trip these days. People were always stupid but the level of dumb driving I’ve seen in the past 3 years has been through the roof.

People are just being much less careful and are heavily distracted.

I don't think it's only that. I've been walking & biking in my city a long time and once cars fully came back the degree of driver hostility to pedestrians and cyclists was noticeably increased. I mean stuff like intentionally swerving towards pedestrians in the crosswalk to scare them, physically pushing a car up against cyclists waiting at a light, actual malice shit.

For a while I thought I was just not used to high traffic anymore, or imagining it or whatever. But I've heard conversations about this so many different times from so many completely different people over the last couple years now.

I've driven regularly around the SF Bay Area.

While driving on 280 and 101 I do see some stupid driving regularly, on the 880 I see near-suicidal driving every time. It's no secret that one side of the bay, particularly up those corridors is much less affluent than the others. I wonder if there's something there, or just bad correlation with too small of a sample size of just my observations.

I had a near hit today. A SUV crossed two lanes both blinded by a string of cars into a Wendy's. I would have been fine if we collided but his passenger would have probably died. I think that is just a sign of people being impatient. There was a turn lane. I've had about 3 near hits this year.

We also increased the number of miles traveled, so the per mile fatalities are ~ same.

Not that this is good news, but probably an indication that nothing has improved in terms of road safety.

I cannot find a 2021 graph of US gasoline consumption for that year or this year.

Good point. So the article mentions the deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. In 2021 it was 1.33, down slightly from 1.34 in 2020. However, I recall that in 2020 the deaths per VMT jumped up.[1]

[edit] changed 2022 to 2020

[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/191641/traffic-related-f...

That’s the number that matters. When you have more people on the road or more miles driven, declining to incorporate some notion of exposure is just fraud.

That is why anti-motorist activists like the big number. It distorts reality in their favor.

Look at the past few decades of fatalities per 100 million miles traveled, and you’ll see phenomenal safety improvements.

No, that number is up significantly

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_...

but same as 2020.

I wonder how many of these fatalities occurred at the crash scene and how many were a result of treatment delays due to overwhelmed/short staffed health care facilities and pandemic protocols?

Several emergency centers in my area have had to shut down on weekends due to a lack of on call doctors and patients are being redirected to more distant but larger hospitals.

There may be more to these numbers than just bad drivers.

I've got a sneaking suspension this is being caused indirectly by our society's increasing inability to focus. I'll stop short of blaming gen Z here since I have not seen the data. I will note they are coming of driving age.

For what its worth, a few hours ago I witnessed an elderly driver on their cellphone, driving about 5 miles per hour in a 30, followed by a line of cars and constantly blaring horns. Gen Z isn't the only age group using tiktok, and definitely not the only age group that drives distracted / inconsiderately / obliviously.

The official narrative will always blame the powerless. Weird how the calls for mandatory driving tests for the elderly only come from social media and not established media.

> in the 16-to-24 age group (up 15%), the 25-to-34 age group (up 18%), and the 35-to-44 age group (up 14%)

https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

> I'll stop short of blaming gen Z here since I have not seen the data. I

Smartphones and the like should be distracting pretty much everyone, not just gen Z

The biggest increase was on urban roads. My hypothesis is that increased levels of WFH had led to lower traffic congestion and therefore higher traffic speeds in urban areas. This makes accidents more deadly.

That was a real effect the first covid summer. Streets were empty by pre-pandemic standards but a lot more extreme driving by the people who were out.

Traffic has been fully back to pre-pandemic levels for a while in my city though, so it's not a very satisfying explanation now.

This study was for 2021, so I think that was the peak for those behaviors.

My conspiracy theory friend offers that there's an honest-to-goodness mind control device at work. Certain frequencies of low-level microwaves make us fuzzy headed and emotionally unstable.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26556835/#:~:text=Soviet%20b....

Or maybe it's just all the cell phones and wifi.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com