Regardless of COVID-19 lockdowns, American roads are getting a lot deadlier

Car crash on major highway during rainfall at night. Ambulance in foreground and police car in background.

Enlarge / The three months between July and September 2020 noticed an enormous rise in highway deaths in the USA. (credit score: Getty Photos)

American roads turned considerably deadlier in 2020, in keeping with the Nationwide Freeway Visitors Security Administration. Though figures for the complete yr will not be obtainable for a while, the NHTSA has calculated the demise toll on our roads for the primary 9 months of 2020, and the information is grim. Between the start of January and the top of September final yr, 28,190 individuals had been killed in crashes, which is a rise of 4.6 %—or 1,249 extra deaths—over the identical 9 months in 2019. (The complete statistics for 2020 will not be obtainable till later this yr.)

What makes this improve even worse information is the truth that 2019 really noticed a lower in highway deaths, which declined by two % in comparison with 2018. In truth, when the NHTSA launched the 2019 statistics in late December of final yr, it included a preliminary evaluation of the primary half of 2020 and located that in these six months, the site visitors quantity decreased by 16 %, and highway deaths declined by 3.Three % over the identical time interval.

(Because the lower in car miles traveled was better than the lower in deaths, the fatality charge per 100 million car miles traveled really elevated from 1.06 to 1.25 when evaluating 1H 2019 and 1H 2020.)

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