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As Cars Get Safer, Why are Crashes Increasing?

Car crash fatalities are down, but car crashes themselves are on the rise

By Rain Noe - November 19, 2019

in Cars

From 1970 to now, the U.S. population went from 205.1 million people to 320.7 million.

Since we Americans are a car-heavy culture, you'd think that the amount of traffic fatalities would have increased along with the population in that time. But it hasn't:

Cars have obviously gotten much safer in that time. What you'd have drove in 1970 would be called a deathtrap compared to today's cars, featuring their ABS, airbags, automatic braking, crumple zones, et cetera.

If we zoom in on the latter end of that chart above (which ends with the last year we could find available data), we can see that traffic fatalities have started to tick back upwards. However, they're not approaching the horrific figures of the 1970s, and they appear more or less stable, within a range of roughly 5,000.

So here's the stat that really surprised me: While motor vehicle fatalities appear relatively stable, motor vehicle crashes are increasing steadily:

In particular I consider that jump from 2015 to 2016, of nearly a million crashes, noteworthy.

So what's the culprit? My first guess would be distracted driving, as many of us Americans can't seem to get our smartphones out of our faces. But this chart shows that the total percentage of crashes caused by distracted driving remained stable from 2012 to 2014, at 16%, and even decreased in 2015:

As for 2016, the NHTSA reports that "Distraction-related deaths decreased by 2.2 percent." Note that they said "deaths," not overall "crashes." I could not find stats on overall distraction-related crashes. They did, however, state that while "distracted driving and drowsy driving fatalities declined…deaths related to other reckless behaviors – including speeding, alcohol impairment, and not wearing seat belts – continued to increase. Motorcyclist and pedestrian deaths accounted for more than a third of the year-to-year increase."

So, some takeaways:

- Less people than in previous decades are dying in car crashes.

- You should still be careful, as the overall amount of car crashes is increasing.

- People are still dying for stupid reasons like driving drunk or not wearing a seatbelt.

But the most disappointing stats I encountered in the NHTSA's report from that year were these:

- Pedestrian deaths (5,987 fatalities – the highest number since 1990) increased by 9.0 percent; and

- Bicyclist deaths (840 fatalities – the highest number since 1991) increased by 1.3 percent.

So while we're killing ourselves and fellow motorists or passengers less with our cars, we're killing more pedestrians and cyclists--people who are traveling in lower-impact ways.

Careful out there, folks.

o

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Juan Cano

5 years ago

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Maybe drivers are not being trained as well? I see tons of people just driving like the car is a wild horse and they're along for the ride, like they have no idea and they're just holding on. People don't seem to know how to merge and drive erratically more. Or I'm getting old and cranky. My wife has been rear-ended 3 times this year, minor crashes luckily.

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- Ray Jepson
  
  Juan Cano
  
  5 years ago
  
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  There is the classic statistic that 93% of people think they are above average drivers. That explains a lot of these people...
  
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P Z

5 years ago

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For cyclists and pedestrian deaths I've seen research indicating that the design of current cars is at least partly to blame. The big flat front of trucks and suvs is akin to being hit by a wall compared to the lower sloped hoods of smaller vehicles.

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David Beck

5 years ago

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They don't define how they determine "distraction-related". There was a pedestrian death at my local Home Depot. While I can't imagine hitting a 72-year-old man in a parking lot as not distraction-related, it was reported as such.

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Ray Jepson

5 years ago

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Rain: I've been following this too. It's of course dependant on distance travelled, urban/rural driving and weather. For example, I've read that thousands of people died after 9/11 because they drove versus flying. Flying is far safer than driving, therefore, those people theoretically would be alive if they had bought a plane ticket.

I haven't looked at the data, but I would imagine that Quebec accidents increased last year because we had more freezing rain leading to slippery roads.

Lastly, the pedestrian deaths could be because there are more pedestrians or more cars driving in urban environments where there are more pedestrians. It's always hard to tell because we are stuck with the data that we've collected and not the data we really want. For example, some studies suggest drunk walking is extremely dangerous. While we always collect alcohol level for drivers in suspected DUI accidents, we never collect alcohol level for pedestrians in accidents.

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