Black Americans, Native Americans, wheelchair users, and people walking in low-income areas are much more likely to be killed by a car, a structural disparity that worsened during the pandemic.īut for all the vulnerabilities of pedestrians in any given incident, most American car deaths don’t involve them.
People who can’t afford cars are also less likely to live in neighborhoods where it’s safe to walk. (The National Safety Council estimates a higher number, 7,700 pedestrians killed in 2019.) Cars killed 6,205 people walking in 2019, an increase of 51 percent from 4,109 in 2009, according to the NHTSA. The past decade has seen an extraordinary increase in the number of people killed by cars while walking, so much so that pedestrians account for most of the recent increase in car fatalities. A pedestrian-first focus would also make motorists safer. Pedestrians are our most vulnerable road users, and they walk in many of the same environments that are dangerous for drivers. If the federal government undertook a national project to dramatically cut the number of people being killed by cars, one compelling starting point could be preventing pedestrian deaths. The continuing surge in pandemic-era car deaths should focus national attention on implementing them. Cars last year killed 23 percent more Black Americans and 11 percent more Native Americans than they did in 2019 (compared to a 4 percent increase for white Americans).Īll this isn’t an inevitability - traffic safety experts know the policy interventions needed to fix the problem. America’s fatality rate has decreased, too, over the same period but not by nearly as much, and it’s started to show signs of ticking back up in the past decade.Īnd like so many other major causes of mortality, people of color are disproportionately affected. Most of America’s peers have shown a clear downward trend in car fatalities over the past two decades: Belgium, France, Spain, and the Czech Republic all had per capita car death rates comparable to the US in 2000 and have since more than halved them. In a recent report on car fatality rates in OECD nations, the US ranked among the worst. At least 13 people were killed when a vehicle packed with passengers, including minors, collided with the large truck. Investigators at the scene of a crash between an SUV and a semi-truck near Holtville, California, on March 2.
The Covid-driven surge in car deaths shouldn’t obscure what was already a disquieting fact before the pandemic: American automotive deaths - both of pedestrians and of people in cars - are a public health emergency. Compared to 2019, many more drivers involved in fatal crashes also didn’t wear seat belts or drove drunk.īut why has the surge persisted and worsened this year, even as traffic has been picking back up and nearing pre-Covid-19 levels? We don’t entirely know, but it seems to have something to do with the pandemic altering traffic patterns. The NHTSA’s preliminary data estimate a lower but still dramatic 10.5 percent increase in car deaths between January and March 2021 compared to the same months last year.Īccording to several traffic experts I spoke with, the explanation for the 2020 fatality spike is relatively straightforward: With fewer cars on the road during quarantine, traffic congestion was all but eliminated, which emboldened people to drive at lethal speeds. If the trend continues for the rest of the year, nationwide deaths would reach the highest level since 2006. It was the biggest single-year spike in the US car fatality rate in nearly a century, and 2021 is on pace to be even worse.īetween January and June of this year, NSC reports that car fatalities increased by 16 percent from the same period last year, with areas as diverse as Texas and New York City reporting sharp increases. That increase occurred even as the number of miles traveled by car decreased by 13 percent from the previous year.
Twice a week, we’ll send you a roundup of the best ideas and solutions for tackling the world’s biggest challenges - and how to get better at doing good. Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletter