And crashes continued to increase when people returned to the roads, later in the pandemic. Instead, an increase in aggressive driving more than made up for the decline in driving. , surprising traffic experts who had hoped that relatively empty roads would cause accidents to decline. And indeed, road deaths per mile driven surged during the March 2020 lockdown as streets emptied and cops practiced Social Distancing so those few on the roads drove like bat out of hell.

Whereas the covid pandemic was in the news in the early spring of 2020. …Ĭrashes - and deaths - began surging in the summer of 2020

The United States is enduring its most severe increase in traffic deaths since the 1940s. Traffic deaths are surging during the pandemic. Dave is brave, but he’s not crazy.įrom the New York Times’ head of data journalism: While it takes a lot of bravery to mention in the NYT that covid restrictions aren’t a free lunch but come with a significant trade-off, it may well be career suicide to mention that Black Lives Matter comes with a major tradeoff due to cops retreating to the donut shop in terms of black (and other) lives ended violently by shootings and car crashes. Here he calls attention to how traffic deaths are way up since the first half of 2020, which he attributes to anger and frustration caused by covid responses, which no doubt do play some role.īut, of course, he has to ignore a major reason why Americans have been driving so much worse: that cops have cut way back on traffic stops, in part because of the social distancing, in part because of the racial reckoning. David Leonhardt, the head of the New York Times’ Upshot data journalism section, has been conducting a worthy campaign to get NYT subscribers to realize that Fighting Covid Forever comes with some unfortunate trade-offs, especially in this mild omicron era.

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