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American roads became significantly more deadly in 2020, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Although the figures for the whole year have not been available for some time, NHTSA has calculated the number of deaths on our roads in the first nine months of 2020, and the news is bleak. Between the beginning of January and the end of September last year, 28,190 people died in accidents, which is an increase of 4.6 percent – or more 1,249 deaths – in the same nine months in 2019. (The complete statistics for 2020 will not be available until the end of this year.)
What makes this increase even worse news is the fact that 2019 really saw a decrease in road deaths, which decreased by 2% compared to 2018. In fact, when the NHTSA released 2019 statistics in late December last year, it included a preliminary analysis of the first half of 2020 and found that during those six months, o traffic volume decreased by 16% and road deaths decreased by 3.3% in the same period.
(As the decrease in vehicle miles traveled was greater than the decrease in deaths, the fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled actually increased from 1.06 to 1.25 when comparing 1H 2019 and 1H 2020. )
Things got much, much worse during the months between July and September, with the number of deaths increasing by 13.3%. The main culprit? Emptyer roads, encouraging drivers to accelerate. Throughout 2020, several states reported large increases in speeding fines, especially those issued to drivers who go 25 mph (40km / h) or more above the speed limit. To make matters worse, it seems that more drivers who are involved in accidents are found with drugs or alcohol in the body, and less wear seat belts.
Across the country, hospitals are suffering from the pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic, with intensive care units fully filled and no idle capacity to deal with people who drove too fast and then crashed. Just because the roads are empty, that doesn’t make them your own private race tracks – slow down and be sensible, because if you have an accident, you may find that the hospital cannot really save your life.