Road deaths spike 8% in 2020
Safety officials point to reckless driving
Ken Collins, manager of statistics for the National Safety Council, tried hard Thursday to come up with a word to describe the agency’s report that traffic deaths nationwide increased about 8% in 2020 while the estimated miles driven dropped 13%.
“Unprecedented. That’s all I can come up with,” Mr. Collins said. “Usually, when you have a recession, the miles driven are a few miles down and deaths are down quite a bit. That’s not what happened here. As far as I know, it’s never happened before.”
The grim road-death estimates for 2020 validate concerns that traffic safety officials had raised since last spring, when near-empty highways as a result of COVID-19 seemed to encourage motorists to ignore speed limits and engage in other dangerous activities such as drinking, using drugs and talking on their cellphones while driving.
“We’re seeing a lot more high-speed driving.” Mr. Collins said. “We shouldn’t have to depend on traffic congestion to hold down speeding.”
Overall, the council reported that 42,060 people died on the nation’s highways in 2020. That’s up 8% from 39,107 in 2019 and the highest number since 2007.
Even worse, the rate of deaths per 100 million miles
driven jumped 24%, from 1.20 in 2019 to 1.49 last year. That’s the highest one-year increase in that category since 1924.
Another 4.8 million people required medical attention for injuries in traffic accidents last year.
In Pennsylvania, estimated deaths rose to 1,166 from 1,107, a 5% increase.
“It is tragic that in the U.S., we took cars off the roads and didn’t reap any safety benefits,” Lorraine M. Martin, the council’s president and CEO, said in a news release. “These data expose our lack of an effective roadway safety culture. It is past time to address roadway safety holistically and effectively, and NSC stands ready to assist all stakeholders, including the federal government.”
Mr. Collins said officials had noticed three dangerous trends during the pandemic: increased speed, reduced use of seat belts, and more drivers impaired by alcohol and drugs, especially marijuana and opioids.
“We have to take personal responsibility for what we do on the road,” he said. “We forget that driving is probably the most dangerous thing we do on a daily basis.”
Another reason for more speeding is the lack or perceived lack of enforcement by police, said Moon police Capt. Doug Ogden, who had special training to spot impaired drivers before becoming a supervisor.
Many law enforcement agencies, including Moon police, encouraged officers to reduce contact with drivers to control the spread of COVID-19 at the beginning of the pandemic last March, resulting in fewer traffic stops.
Pennsylvania State Police statistics show the number of traffic citations and warnings issued by troopers dropped every month from March through the end of the year. The biggest drop was in May, when citations fell from 72,135 in 2019 to 15,228 and warnings from 27,692 to 10,401.
In Moon, officers were told to go after only the most egregious offenders because of the pandemic, Capt.
Collins said, and the department eliminated courtesy fingerprinting for background checks and checking baby seats for proper installation. That changed at the beginning of the year.
“We are now moving out of that,” he said. “We’ve made a very definite effort to re-engage with people. But there’s still this perception that we aren’t stopping people.”
In addition to speeding, Capt. Ogden said, his officers have seen a substantial increase in drug- impaired drivers, especially from marijuana. In some instances, officers driving behind a vehicle can smell pot smoke, he said.
“It’s so pervasive,” he said. “There’s a horrible lack of education among those who drive and smoke marijuana. It does impair their ability to drive.
“And we have people who say they have a medical marijuana card so they can do it. That’s not true. You can’t drive with any amount of [the active ingredient in marijuana] in your system.”
Capt. Ogden said he’s convinced that stricter enforcement is the only way to reduce risky driving.
“I think the answer is tried and true: There’s nothing that works better than enforcement,” he said. “The answer is law enforcement and the expectation that you are going to be caught.
“If you get pulled over, you tell two other people and then maybe they are more careful, too.”
Overall, Texas maintained its rank as the state with the most traffic deaths at 3,891, up 9%. Seven states had jumps of more than 15%: Arkansas (+26%), Connecticut (+22%), Georgia (+18%), Mississippi (+19%), Rhode Island (+26%), South Dakota (+ 33%) and Vermont (+32%).
Nine states had an estimated drop in traffic deaths: Alaska (- 3%), Delaware (-11%), Hawaii (-20%), Idaho (- 7%), Maine (- 1%), Nebraska (-9%), New Mexico (-4%), North Dakota (-1%) and Wyoming (-13%).