Despite a significant national decline in vehicle miles traveled in 2020 due to Covid-19, traffic fatalities rose 24% while pedestrian fatality rates experienced their highest increase in 45 years. No surprise, experts were shocked when there were 38,680 deaths on U.S. roadways in 2020, the most since 2007.
And according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), an estimated 8,730 people died in car crashes in the first three months of 2021, compared with 7,900 deaths during the same period in year 2020 – a year-on-year increase of more than 10% despite a 2% drop in the number of miles driven.
After decades of safety gains, the latest evidence suggests that after the pandemic – for some unknown reason – American drivers became more reckless, more likely to speed, drink, or use drugs, and to leave their seatbelts unbuckled.
The rise of motor vehicle deaths lines up with other pandemic-era trends, such as increased alcohol sales, drug overdoses, and homicides.
Before the pandemic, safety on U.S. roadways had been improving for decades thanks to enforcement of seatbelt laws and the advent of airbags, improved braking and stability control, and other safety measures. Annual fatalities fell from around 55,000 in 1970 to 36,096 in 2019. Then came the 7% rise in 2020 followed by a nearly 20% jump in the first six months of 2021.
Traffic congestion levels ticked up in 2021 but overall remain below pre-pandemic levels especially in downtown areas, according to Inrix.
Inrix also found that trips to downtown areas of U.S. cities are 22% below pre-pandemic levels while downtown trips are 19% below pre-pandemic levels in the United Kingdom.
The perplexing thing is that, when someone drives on the Capital Beltway or the Baltimore Beltway, it also appears to be back to normal or in many cases even worse than normal. On the Baltimore beltway, the locations where traffic was previously congested before COVID during peak hours continues to exist and, in fact, it feels in many cases as if it has gotten worse.
New York drivers reported that they lost an average of 102 hours in traffic, the most in the nation. Still, that represented a 27% drop from pre-pandemic levels.
In addition, Inrix believes that there has been an important long-term change and that is the shift away from rush hour peaks. According to Inrix, highways and roads are designed to handle peak demand, often the morning rush hour. The more that people can commute later in the day, work remotely, or shift their regular driving hours, the less congestion they will see.
The fact that we are seeing increased fatalities, and supposedly reduced congestion, does not appear to be what is actually happening on the Baltimore and Washington DC metro area beltways.
We will need to keep an eye on traffic in general and accidents and fatalities in particular.
Finally, these current statistics noted above do not correspond with the results coming out of The Traffic Group’s East Coast Study on Black Friday in November 2021 where we found that parking demand was 50% of what it has been in the past.
It seems that in our current world what is down is up and what is up is down.