June 21, 2022 – Speeding increased during the morning and afternoon commuting hours in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic — and drivers never slowed down.
“The empty roads probably tempted pandemic-stressed drivers to put the pedal down,” says Jessica Cicchino, vice president of research at IIHS. “But information collected since the lockdowns ended and the roads filled back up suggests that risky driving has become the new normal.”
A new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows that the absence of rush-hour traffic prompted drivers to step on the gas. Higher travel speeds persisted throughout 2020 and 2021, and other forms of risky driving also became more common. Crash deaths rose 7 percent in 2020 despite a dramatic decrease in the number of miles Americans drove.