My personal observation: Drivers in my state are legendary for being bad/aggressive drivers. That being said, I have never seen the level of aggressive anti-social driving that I saw in 2021. I expect bad road decorum in my state, but it was shockingly bad in 2021.

> Deaths on rural interstates and urban arterial roads increased by 15 percent. And local and urban collector road deaths went up by 20 percent, belying the idea of "Vision Zero."

> It was risky to be a driver, passenger, motorcyclist, pedestrian, or cyclist in 2021, as deaths in each category went up by 12, 9, 9, 13, and 5 percent, respectively, year over year.

What I get from this is that being a pedestrian on a local road is becoming increasingly dangerous. It's a shame that pedestrians have been so low on the totem pole when it comes to safety in the US, despite being one of the most environmental and economical ways to travel.

I'd love to bring in discussion about how the US needs to change its transportation infrastructure, but I think that horse has been beaten to death here.

Anecdotally, I have noticed other drivers are getting worse. What I've seen primarily is that everyone is driving inattentively. There are SO MANY people on their phones or even watching movies on tablets while "driving". The biggest giveaway is poor lane-keeping and signal usage, which is epidemic at least here in Texas.

People in the US are already horrible drivers by global standards, but they've certainly gotten worse in the last two years. Unfortunately, if you're one of the few people that actually pays attention while driving, not only do you notice this worsening, the fact that's its entirely by selfish choice makes you even more livid than you generally are when driving surrounded by imbeciles.

We desperately need to have actual licensing standards in this country and curtail car usage by people who should not be driving, as well as enforce distracted driving laws we already have on the books.

American roads are just badly designed from a safety standpoint. They're often too wide and flat which incentivizes faster travel than the posted speed limit, lots of streets (called stroads by Strong Towns) have constant entry/exit activity which means more points of conflict, and to top it all off we have so many signs and markers which confuse people. Basically, it's a perfect set of conditions for a bad experience driving.

Anecdotally, in the last year it seems I run into a lot more distracted drivers on their phones. Generally when I see someone driving erratically, not maintaining speed, swerving, etc, I later notice they are heads down on a phone, sometimes even watching a video.

I wondered if this was an international pattern, and the UK shows the opposite: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casua...

People going out less => less crashes for us.

Lots of confounding factors. Increased dependence on phones during lockdowns, increased distracted driving? Out of practice driving and commuting? More post-Covid people behind the wheel with impaired attention?

   2019 - 661 deaths
   2020 - 610 (-51)
   2021 - 582 (-28)

There are many millions of car accidents every year, with less than 1% resulting in death. The most important factor in fatal accidents is the speed at which the crash occurred. In the city, traffic density often prevents fast driving, regardless of speed limit. Less traffic means people can drive faster. This doesn't seem like a mystery to me.