Cheap Gas, More Driving Leading To More Fatal Crashes
The number of fatal traffic crashes has risen 14 percent over last year, and deaths on the road could top 40,000 — the first time since 2007 — the National Safety Council is reporting (via Autoblog).
The council points to lower gas prices and a better economy as reasons why people are driving more and crashing more.
The estimated economic impact of the crashes through the first six months of 2015 was $125 billion according to the council, up 24 percent from last year.
The data from NSC shows a surprisingly sharp increase over the last two years in fatal crashes, after a long decrease in overall (read: fatal and non-fatal) crashes.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the number of traffic deaths decreased sharply after 2007 and there were fewer fatal crashes in 2011 than any year since 1994, when that agency started to compile statistics.
(It should be noted that NSC and NHTSA count deaths differently. NSC includes traffic and nontraffic accidents and deaths or injuries that occur within a year. NHTSA counts injuries and deaths within traffic accidents after 30 days.)
According to the Federal Highway Administration, Americans may drive more miles this year than in previous years. American drivers are on pace to drive 3.06 trillion miles in 2015, topping the previous record of 3.03 trillion miles in 2008.
Highly populated states such as California, Florida and Texas had the highest number of traffic deaths in 2015, according to the NSC.
Oregon had the largest increase in traffic fatalities from data retrieved at the same time last year, with a 59-percent increase in deaths over the first six months of 2015. South Dakota (34 percent), Delaware (28 percent) and Washington D.C. (23 percent) had the sharpest drops.
More by Aaron Cole
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Traffic fatalities per mile driven peaked about 1965. Still, that's a dramatic increase year over year with a huge variation state to state. I doubt it's explained by a four dollar a tank price cut.
Besides phones and texting while driving, the other thing I noticed over the past year is a large increase in commercial trucks on the road. In the Detroit area at least, we had a few years during the Great Recession where we saw hardly any big trucks on the roads. All of these recent trucks back on the road means that we have a whole bunch of newly licensed truck drivers as well. From what I have seen in traffic, some of these guys appear to have very little time behind the wheel of large vehicles. And in fact, there is very little driving time required to even get a CDL in the first place. Surely this is a big contributor to the increased deaths on our roads.
(It should be noted that NSC and NHTSA count deaths differently. NSC includes traffic and nontraffic accidents and deaths or injuries that occur within a year. NHTSA counts injuries and deaths within traffic accidents after 30 days.) So all of those who happen to have enough brain stem function to make it past 30 days doesn't fit within NHTSA data. Does that mean the NSC is in favour of universal health care? ;)
Licensing illegals aliens wouldn't have anything to do with it (sarcasm).