By Mark Boada, Executive Editor
Eclipsed this month by wall-to-wall coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic was an encouraging bright spot of news about U.S. traffic fatalities. In an early May report, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported that, according to an “early estimate,” in 2019 the number of highway deaths was down for the third straight year.
Specifically, NHTSA reported that data from the Federal Highway Administration shows a decline of 1.2 percent over the count for 2018. The 36,120 killed is still – what? – 36,120 too many, but marks a hopeful trend, or “trendlet,” if you will, since the end of 2016, when 37,806 people died on our roadways. That represented a stunning 6.5 percent over the number recorded in 2015 which, in turn, was a staggering 8.4 percent more than the 35,484 killed in 2014.
The prime suspect in that two-year increase was out-of-control growth in distracted driving, the focus being not just the normal daydreaming, eating, or fiddling with the A/C or radio, but talking and texting while behind the wheel. And you could also chalk the increase to the fact that we were nicely recovered from the Great Recession, which artificially deflated the highway fatality tolls by more than 9 percent each in 2008 and 2009, because so many people were unemployed and off the roads.
So, does the current three-year decline mean people have gotten the message and are following all the precautions against using their mobile devices while they drive? Or, are fewer people driving while liquored up? Or maybe it shows the success of all the latest driver-assist technology that is seeping into the national fleet?
Unfortunately, NHTSA admits it doesn’t know, at least not yet. To quote its latest report: “It is too soon to speculate on the contributing factors or potential implications of any changes in deaths on our highways.” But the report’s truly encouraging revelation is that the number of deaths last year decreased even as Americans racked up more driving miles.
According to the report, we drove 28.8 billion more miles in 2019, an increase of nearly 1 percent from the year before. That made the fatality rate drop from 1.13 deaths per 100 million miles traveled in 2018 to 1.10 last year. And, from the perspective of changes every three months, the string of reductions looks even better.
Quoting the report again, “The second quarter of 2019 represents the seventh consecutive quarter with year-to-year decreases in fatalities since the fourth quarter of 2017 [and t]he fourth quarter of 2019 represents the eleventh consecutive quarter with year-to-year decreases in [the] fatality rate since the second quarter of 2017.” [Emphases mine – MB.]
Now, NHTSA cautions that all those numbers may change when it receives data from another source, the federal government’s Fatality Analysis Reporting Systems (FARS) annual report, which comes out later this year. But safety and fleet professionals have reason to hope that, even without the longed-for universal adoption of longed-for self-driving cars that eliminate the possibility of driver error that accounts for some 94 percent of all collisions today, something good and lasting is going on.
But wait! Even if whatever has worked over the last three years has done all it can to reduce highway fatalities, there’s great reason to believe that this year we’ll see another steep decline in the traffic-related deaths, possibly rivalling or even greater than the declines in 2008 and 2009. Why? The COVID-19 pandemic, and depending how long it lasts.
About the same time the NHTSA report came out, Lytx, a leading provider of fleet video telematics, reported that year-over-year data from its trucking fleet customers collected in March showed a remarkable 51 percent decrease in traffic accident frequency and a 55 percent decrease in the severity of all risky driving behaviors.
More specifically, Lytx found the following changes among its technology-equipped truck drivers:
• Late responses to hazards, down 62 percent.
• Collisions, down 28 percent.
• Avoidable near-collisions, down 25 percent.
• Unavoidable near collisions, down 23 percent.
Interestingly, here’s how Kyle Warlick, Lytx client intelligence analyst, interpreted the data:
“The results from our own clients are consistent with what we’re seeing from secondary industry research as well. Driving risk is significantly heightened by the presence of other motorists on the roads…With the majority of people across the country observing shelter-in-place guidelines – and driving less – it’s natural we’d see decreases across these types of risk.”
So, gross data that comes out next year is likely to be skewed and represent less progress in driving safety than that so many fewer people were driving fewer miles in 2020. The real test will come when the U.S. economy resumes its growth.
But yet, NHTSA’s latest report holds promise that all the efforts to minimize drivers’ bad use of technology and to increase the safety technology that surrounds them, that we are making our roads safer in the long run, mile by mile. Maybe we’re on the right track.
