[chmod600]

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

TIL that car fatalities were declining until 2019, and then reversed and are getting worse.

What happened in the last five years? Safety features of the cars themselves are improving (emergency braking). Alcohol may be a factor, but why in the last five years? Cars have been big for a while. WFH probably reduced commuting time. Other countries appear to be on the decline.

[scoofy]

One current theory is speed (citation below).

Ironically, heavy traffic is one of the better "safety features" of our automobile transportation system. Since crowded roads are higher-conflict roads, there is a bit of luck in the fact that traffic slows down when it gets crowded. There may be more collisions, but they are less deadly.

Suddenly there is a pandemic, and there are orders of magnitude fewer people on the roads. The number of collisions goes down, but the number of deaths goes up, because all of the collisions are at higher, deadlier speeds.

---

Driving Went Down. Fatalities Went Up. Here's Why. by Charles Marohn

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/1/10/driving-went-d...

[bostonpete]

> TIL that car fatalities were declining until 2019, and then reversed and are getting worse.

Per your link, fatalities per mile drive bottomed out in 2014 and barely dropped after 2010. There's been some speculation that this reversal in safety was tied to the rise of smartphones and a corresponding increase of distracted driving.

[SilasX]

Note that deaths per vehicle mile traveled (VMT) went up during Covid. Reducing commuting time doesn't necessarily reduce deaths under that metric -- just the opposite! Commuter trips are probably the safest per VMT since they're the most familiar.

There were stories about this effect, even as total collisions went down because of the bigger drop in VMT[1]. I speculated that this was a combination of

a) the above effect (stripping out the safer commuter trips), plus

b) the roads being dominated by people least willing to follow the advice to stay home, which correlates with being anti-social and reckless (mean though that sounds! [2])

My facebook friends suggested

c) the immense stress of coping with the Covid world made the average person less able to concentrate.

I also suspect:

d) traffic enforcement was reduced and drivers gradually started branching out into more aggressive maneuvers as they became aware of this.

Note that people saw their car insurance rates go down during covid because the typical personal policy only cares about accidents per unit time, and rarely adjusts for miles driven.

But I don't know why it hasn't regressed to the pre-covid levels -- probably because WFH hasn't completely reversed.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39179818

[seanmcdirmid]

Uber became more expensive, meaning its reduction in DUIs had ended?

It is much more likely we hit a plateau in improvement and now we are just fluctuating around an equilibrium.

[GenerocUsername]

I believe this.

From 2013-2020 I used to Uber 6-10 times a year.

From 2020-2024 I have ubered 2 times due to the price being way higher.

[TheCoelacanth]

The reaction to the pandemic normalized not caring if other people live or die as long as you aren't personally inconvenienced.