Even as coronavirus kept more people off roads, fatal crashes did not drop. Here’s why

The lockdowns caused by the coronavirus pandemic forced businesses to shutter and people to work from home, leaving highways relatively empty since March.

But across the country, the rate of road fatalities has climbed even as we’re driving less, leading some experts to sound alarms and search for reasons.

PennDOT officials caution not to read much into its preliminary data, but crash stats from Pennsylvania appear to follow the trend. The number of people who died in March and May barely budged even as people drove far less because of the pandemic.

“Fatalities are lower, but not as low as they should be,” said Ken Kolosh, manager of statistics for the National Safety Council.

While some, including Kolosh, say it’s too early to determine the root cause behind the growing number of road deaths, others have pinned the trend on speeding. With little traffic to contend with, drivers have responded by driving faster. Experts have long warned that high speeds can exacerbate crashes by making them deadlier.

Fatality rates grew as traffic decreased

Starting in mid-March, Pennsylvanians began to scale back their travel. Some businesses closed while others had employees work from home. Schools switched to virtual lessons, and Gov. Tom Wolf issued stay-at-home orders for nonessential business in the Keystone State.

Between March, April and May -- the most recent months of preliminary crash data available -- motorists traveled about 8.4 billion miles less in Pennsylvania than they had in the same months of 2019. And while the number of people killed in crashes dropped this year over those months, the overall fatality rate climbed from an average of 10.92 people killed per billion miles traveled to 13.38 killed per billion miles, according to preliminary data PennDOT released to the Federal Highway Administration.

PennDOT officials say they have taken no action over the data, saying it still needs to be vetted for accuracy and represents a small sample size. On the whole, fewer people have died in crashes since the pandemic started thanks to a significant drop in crash deaths during April, said Jennifer Kuntch, PennDOT’s deputy communications director.

“At this time we cannot validate that all the police reports have been submitted and not all the ones that were submitted have been reviewed for accuracy. There are significant variables that factor into this type of assessment and there are still too many outstanding concerns at this point. Therefore, performing this assessment now would not provide accurate data that could easily be compared to past years,” she said.

Alarms over speeding

That hasn’t stopped other experts from raising alarm bells over the trend, which has shown up in other states and countries, though at different levels. The Governors Highway Safety Administration held a teleconference on the subject last week, and panelists pinned much of the blame on speeding.

INRIX, a tech company that collects cellphone data to analyze traffic patterns from around the globe, quickly noticed that drivers everywhere were going faster as the highways emptied. In April, the company found speeds jumped on Philadelphia highways by as much as 21%. In June, the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission dug through INRIX data and found motorists on Route 22 in the region were going faster, up to 15 to 30 mph over the speed 55 mph speed limit.

Michael Hanson, the director of Minnesota’s Office of Traffic Safety, said traffic in his state dropped by as much as 60% during the early weeks of the pandemic. Drivers responded by flooring their accelerator pedals. The number of drivers pulled over for going 100 mph or faster doubled, and road deaths spiked.

“We were really hopeful we would see a decrease in the number of deaths,” Hanson said. “What we in fact saw was the exact opposite.”

The trend has played out across the country, said David Harkey, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a nonprofit funded by auto insurance companies to research and improve road safety. Normally, the silver lining of an economic downturn is improved road safety. With people out of work and money tight, people travel less, meaning there are fewer people to get hurt on highways. This time around, the pandemic has brought staggering unemployment and less traffic but none of the public safety benefits.

“This has not been like a normal recession,” Harkey said. “You expected to see a drop in that mortality rate, but this has been very different.”

Pennsylvania State Trooper Brent Miller said that between the end of March and the Fourth of July weekend, state police dedicated more resources to combat the surge in aggressive driving. The number of tickets roughly match up with the number of deaths.

In April, state police issued 103 tickets for going 100 mph or faster, a 39.7% decrease from April 2019. In May, state police issued 222 tickets to drivers going 100 mph or faster. That was a 15.6% jump from the number of tickets issued in May 2019. Despite the hike, he believed Pennsylvania has held up relatively well.

“We didn’t see it as much in this state compared to others,” Miller said.

Speeding facts

For over 20 years, speeding has been a factor in about 30% of the country’s fatal crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In 2017 and 2018, speed played a role in 26% of fatal crashes in America.

High speeds limit drivers’ reaction times, increase the distance it takes for a vehicle to stop and reduce the effectiveness of safety devices, according to the National Safety Council.

In general, roads with cars traveling at higher speeds see more crashes, and crashes at higher speeds tend to produce more serious injuries, according to the Institute for Road Safety Research of the Netherlands.

Morning Call reporter Tom Shortell can be reached at 610-820-6168 or [email protected].

PA. PANDEMIC CRASH STATS

PennDOT released these figures to the Federal Highway Administration. 2020 fatality rates are based on preliminary data.

March 2019: 75 fatalities, 8.11 billion miles traveled

March 2020: 77 fatalities, 6.56 billion miles traveled

April 2019: 110 fatalities, 8.68 billion miles traveled

April 2020: 63 fatalities, 4.64 billion miles traveled

May 2019: 97 fatalities, 9.02 billion miles traveled

May 2020: 94 fatalities, 6.28 billion miles traveled

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