A researcher from Michigan State University has been studying driver behavior during the pandemic and says fatal crashes have been up because people are driving too fast. Preliminary numbers show fatal crashes increased again in 2021 over 2020, up by about 10%, continuing a trend reflected in national data. Speaking on the MDOT podcast, Talking Transportation this week, engineering professor Peter Savolainen said fatal crashes on highways with high speed limits have been slightly up.
“Fatalities are up between 6.3 and 6.5%, and then we saw basically increasingly larger increases in fatalities as speed limits got lower, interestingly,” Savolainen said. “So, if you look at 40 and 45 miles per hour roads, we’re on a 10 to 11% increase. As we get down to 30 miles per hour, we a 30% increase in fatals, and interestingly, 25 miles per hour, our lowest speed roads, fatalities are up by 98%, roughly.”
Savolainen says it’s driver behavior like speed to blame. Even as there were fewer cars on the road during the pandemic, fatal crashes were going up because drivers weren’t being as cautious. The Governors Highway Safety Association reports drivers struck and killed an estimated 6,721 people on foot last year, and there was 21% increase in the pedestrian fatality rate from 2019 to 2020.
