Unsafe Drivers Made up Larger Share of Motorists During Pandemic, Study Says

Most people know that traffic injuries and deaths continued at a high rate even though there were fewer drivers on the road during the pandemic. Many reports attributed this anomaly to higher speeds while roads weren’t clogged. But now the Washington Post is reporting on a different theory. Their article claims that a higher percentage of young, risk-taking drivers were on the road during the height of Covid. Here are the opening paragraphs of the article:

Although there have been fewer cars on the road nationwide during the coronavirus pandemic, a study released Monday found that younger and riskier drivers were increasingly on the roads during a surge in traffic fatalities across the country.

The more dangerous drivers made up a small proportion of drivers overall, but they were likely to take the most risks as traffic levels were down, according to an AAA study. The study sought to understand why traffic deaths rose while driving was down at least 20 percent during much of 2020. During that time, crashes involving impairment, speeding, red-light running, aggressiveness, and non-seatbelt usage spiked to their highest level in more than a decade, AAA said.

“We saw this small group of people who were driving more than they did before the pandemic were the same people who were the highest-risk drivers on the road,” said AAA senior researcher Brian Tefft.

Traffic fatalities jumped 12 percent to 31,700 deaths in the first nine months of 2021 compared with the same period in 2020 — the largest year-over-year rise since at least 1975, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In 2020, about 38,680 people died in vehicle crashes, the highest since 2007.