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.
drivers made up a small proportion of drivers overall, but they were likely to take the most risks. 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.
But researchers said drivers staying home were more likely to be safer drivers. The drivers who reduced their driving during the pandemic were generally of middle age and disproportionately female, a group the study said had a comparatively lower risk of involvement in fatal crashes.Four percent of drivers drove more than before the pandemic, the study said. That group had a median age of 39, compared with 50 for the overall driving population.
The more frequent drivers tended to be disproportionately male. But after researchers accounted for age, gender and how much they drove, the frequent drivers also were those who are more likely to speed, purposefully run red lights, read texts while driving, drive without seat belts, change lanes aggressively or drive after using marijuana or alcohol, the study said.
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