Despite COVID-19 lockdowns, US roads are becoming much deadlier

American roads became much deadlier in 2020, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. While numbers for the entire year won’t be available for some time, NHTSA has calculated our road fatalities for the first nine months of 2020, and the news is grim. Between the start of January and the end of September last year, 28,190 people were killed in crashes, a 4.6% increase – or 1,249 more deaths – in the same nine months of 2019 (Full statistics for 2020 will not be available until later this year.)

What makes this increase even worse is the fact that in 2019, decrease deaths on the road, which was down 2% from 2018. In fact, when the NHTSA released statistics for 2019 at the end of December of last year, it included a preliminary analysis of the first half of 2020 and found that during those six months, the traffic volume decreased by 16 percent and road fatalities decreased by 3.3 percent during the same period.

(As the decrease in vehicle-kilometers traveled was greater than the decrease in fatalities, the fatality rate per 100 million vehicle-kilometers traveled actually fell from 1.06 to 1.25 when comparing 1H 2019 and 1H 2020.)

Things got worse during the months between July and September, with a massive increase in deaths of 13.3%. The main culprit? Empty roads, encouraging drivers to speed up. Throughout 2020, several states reported sharp increases in speeding tickets, and particularly those issued to drivers exceeding the speed limit of 25 mph (40 km / h) or more. To make matters worse, it appears that more drivers who find themselves in crashes end up with drugs or alcohol in their system, and fewer have worn seat belts.

Hospitals across the country are buckling under the strain of the COVID-19 pandemic, with intensive care units completely full and no spare capacity to deal with people who drove too fast and then crashed. Just because the roads are empty doesn’t make them your private race tracks. Slow down and be reasonable, because if you do get into an accident you may find that the hospital can’t actually save your life.