Nearly a decade of declining road deaths has created complacency among state lawmakers, whose failure to enact stronger highway-safety laws leaves motorists at peril now that traffic fatalities are rising again, according to Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. In December, NHTSA released preliminary data showing that road deaths in the first nine months of 2012 rose 7.1% over the same period in 2011 — the largest year-over-year jump for that period since 1975.