The Other Epidemic: Fatal Car Accidents. NewsWire

NewsWire: 3/23/22

• Could the pandemic’s risky driving habits be here to stay? In an op-ed, columnist Megan McArdle argues that more dangerous roads might be the new normal. (The Washington Post)
  
• NH: In our most recent U.S. Demography Review, we noted that although traffic volume nationwide in 2020 was down, fatal car crashes rose--and rose per capita (that is, faster than population). In fact, 2020 marked the highest number of U.S. traffic fatalities since 2007. Clearly, deaths per driver or per mile skyrocketed.
• What we didn't understand was exactly why. True, emptier roads made it easier for drivers to drive at higher speeds. And this could certainly have led to higher deaths per mile or per driver. But why would the extra deaths exceed the decline expected from the decline in the total number of miles or drivers?
• There's an old rule in behavioral sciences: A secondary effect rarely exceeds a primary effect in total outcome. Illustration: If you install a safety device in a racecar, drivers will feel safer and go faster (and crash more) than they did before the device was installed. (This is the famous Peltzman Effect, confirmed by the U. of Chicago economist Sam Peltzman.) However, Peltzman would still expect fewer racecar drivers to die in accidents after the devices were installed. The secondary effect (driving a bit faster) would not exceed the primary effect (safer racecars).
• To get the sort of disproportionate rise in deaths per mile and per driver that we saw in 2020, something else must have happened besides simply empty roads beckoning America's drivers to go a bit faster.
• Researchers at the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety believe they have found what that something is. They noticed that, while fatal crashes rose by 6.8% in 2020, the overall number of auto accidents and traffic injuries overall declined in that year. Thus, every crash was more likely to be fatal. They also noticed that a larger share of crashes involved speeding, driver impairment, and seatbelt non-use. This suggested that in 2020, riskier drivers made up a larger share of all drivers who were on the road.
• To investigate their hypothesis, the researchers conducted a survey. They found that last year most Americans (60%) reported driving less due to the pandemic, while 36% said they had not changed how much they drove. But 4% reported driving more. On average, this group was younger, more likely to be male, and more likely to report having engaged in a wide variety of risky driving behaviors within the past 30 days, including running red lights, texting while driving, driving under the influence, and speeding.
• According to columnist Megan McArdle, the deleterious impact of these drivers could last beyond 2020. As traffic levels have increased again in 2021 and 2022, she argues that this relatively small number of risky drivers has been resetting the standard for everyone. Driving behavior tends to be contagious: If the drivers around us are speeding, we’re more likely to speed, too.
• If McArdle is right, then America's roads may not automatically revert to their pre-pandemic norms. More dangerous roads could become our new normal. As evidence, she cites preliminary estimates through September on traffic fatalities in 2021. (The official 2021 numbers are not yet available.) If we compare the first nine months of 2021 with the first nine months of 2020, deaths per capita are up +12% YoY.
• This doesn’t bode well for America’s roads…or for the 2021 death rate. (See “US Death Rate Rose by 15% in 2020.”)