Traffic fatalities have increased 15% since 2013. But the increase hasn't been evenly spread:
Since 2013 urban fatalities have grown a whopping 46% more than rural fatalities even though urban miles driven are up only about 10% more than rural miles driven.
Why? The question here is not why there are more urban fatalities. In fact, that hasn't always been true. The question is why the growth of urban fatalities vs. rural fatalities was nearly zero from 2006-12 and then suddenly began to skyrocket starting in 2013.
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I find it annoying when the words around a graph— the title, the labels on the axes, etc— don’t make any sense. In my local newspaper I just ignore it. They have no journalistic standards nor any math chops. In the WSJ or the NY Times it’s annoying; they know better, but just didn’t bother.
From Kevin it’s very surprising.
I assume the underlying datapoint (eg, deaths per 10 million miles driven, or what have you) adjusts for scale. Given that assumption, the chart makes sense: urban road mortality passed that of rural road fatality around 2013, and has since risen sharply.
I would also guess "fatal traffic accidents" include cyclist deaths (killing someone on a bike with your vehicle has to count as an accident, right?), so, perhaps the rise in urban traffic deaths has to do with the increase in cycling, if there's been one (which I believe is the case).
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"Urban as a percentage of rural" implies a ratio, but how would that be negative? (A difference could be so, however.) And the table he links to doesn't show traffic fatalities at all. Perhaps he meant to link to this.
Thanks for the link. Kevin's was just for miles driven.
Traffic fatalities are going down in rural areas. In urban areas, fatalities are down for "local" streets, but up for interstate, other principle arterial, minor arterial, and major collector (limited data on minor collector).
And the big winner is....other principle arterial.
Purely anecdotal, but I have witnessed more dangerous driving on the road in the last few years. It seems like nearly every time I drive I see someone blowing through a stoplight, trying to speed and pass other cars on a packed city street, or breakchecking someone for no reason. It seems like other drivers behaving cautiously makes them extra reckless. If you slow down because the light turns yellow, you now have to expect that a car behind you will swerve around you to speed through the light as it turns red.
I almost prefer driving at rush hour now, because the sheer volume of cars on the road makes it hard for the reckless drivers to speed or swerve into oncoming traffic to pass others. Plus, the urban drag racers dont bother to go out during rush hour.
I'll second this observation & I don't even live in a city. I blame the erosion of common civility.
Smart devices. Phones, big screens, tablets, Pokemon Go players driving slowly to gain in-game mileage. What else.
Devices makes sense. Less room for error in urban places. Not a lot of uptake until ~2013, arguably.
Is there any further breakdown, by age, or intoxication, or region?
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Perhaps bigger vehicles turn out to be more deadly in urban environments.
My guess would be that urban cars used to be relatively smaller than urban cars, but now they aren’t much smaller at all.
More opportunities for collisions with pedestrians and automobiles at a time when the front of trucks and SUVs have become larger and much, much less sloped.
Older sedan hits at 40 mph is very bad but there's a chance the body will slide on/off, reducing impact. A head-on by the newer SUVs is more likely to result in the body being slammed backwards onto the street.
Everyone's already covered whatever I could think of. But I didn't remember how often I see other drivers when I'm on the road holding mobile devices in one hand not keeping their eyes on the road. Women especially who are already at a disadvantage as drivers generally for lots of reasons. But everyone's got screens in their dashboards since 2013 as well that, while helpful, are also distracting and require interaction to change functions.
"Women especially who are already at a disadvantage as drivers generally for lots of reasons. "
I think, perhaps, we need Kevin to make a chart of road accidents and fatalities broken down by gender.
But unless you're talking about overworked mom's doing the yeoman's work of family on top of her job, this is really sexist. And if that's what you actually meant, then try giving women the credit for the extra burdens, not making them seem lacking.
I took it to mean women's generally smaller size making it harder to have full field of view even with seat adjustments in big trucks or SUVs than average sized men.
People are more time sensitive in urban areas, so they drive more aggressively and thus cause more collisions with other cars. This was real obvious to me on a road trip for Thanksgiving. Outside of urban areas, drivers were much more lackadaisical about getting somewhere as fast as possible. Urban dwellers might have 6-8 things they want to do today vs rural folk having maybe 2-3, and the urban drivers will have to fight traffic the entire day to get them all done. The “I’ve got all the time in the world” feeling is stronger in rural areas, possibly because there are just fewer overall destinations to be FOMOing about.
But has that changed in the last decade? Seems to me that urbanites have about as many errands as before, and rural areas have been boring for decades. Post-pandemic there is still less traffic than before in many cities.
Higher population density, pedestrian density in urban areas? Significantly more people, relatively speaking, than are still stuck in their Rural Lifestyles®?
At the beginning of The Pandemic (2020), I saw a major increase in people driving like bats out of hell, in broad daylight. Fortunately, the streets and sidewalks were nearly empty. But they generally reserved that for after dark in the past.
This lockdown era drag racing thing is borne out by the data, not just you!
The density divide existed long before 2013. What is it about urban areas specifically over the last decade or so that has made their roads get more dangerous vis-a-vis those in rural areas. I'm sticking with my theory about the cycling boom. It's a far bigger deal in urban areas, I'd guess, and most recently it's been turbo-charged by the explosion in the popularity of e-bikes.
Heh. Just last week, NPR had a story about literal explosions involving e-bikes. Apparently, the batteries can massively overheat, particularly if they're used or refurbushed.
E-bikes have become the go-to go-mobile for New York City messengers and food deliverers. The story noted that six have been killed this year alone by batteries exploding while being charged.
Sorry for the diversion.
I agree that hand-held devices are a likely contributor; but that should also be declining now as cars are equipped with technology to adapt to adapt.
I also think there was an increase in cyclists on the road in urban areas. The tough bike messenger has morphed into the everyday commuter.
Why would handheld devices be driving an increase in traffic fatalities specifically in urban areas? Do rural motorists really use cell phones that much less frequently? Seems a stretch. The explanation has to be something unique to cities.
Is the "in Boston" part real and you need to ask that? I just drove there last week for the first time in three years, but had close to 20 years driving experience there, and it's gotten notably worse in just 3 years. Bike lanes with pylons everywhere, new one way streets, terrible site lines everywhere. Dedicated bike lanes in principle are great, but these new ones aren't terribly well designed. They'll lull you into a false sense of security, when really it feels like you've got to be more vigilant than ever before. I feel like a moments distraction on the cell phone would be so much more dangerous in Boston than a rural area.
Same goes for here in St. Louis. Between bikes, pedestrians, and scooters, I feel like every time I take a turn I have to really very actively scan for someone shooting into my way, especially compared to when I'm 20 miles out of town in "rural" Missouri. And ditto for the (now ubiquitous) cars running red lights (not stretching a yellow -- really running red lights by wide margins). They're much more likely to hit another car or bike or pedestrian here in town as compared to the rural areas.
I'm thinking it's like "collisional radiation" -- that's a density squared X velocity process, so per particle it scales up like density. Cell phone distractions just naturally seem like they'll have magnified consequences in urban areas. Ditto for increased aggressiveness in driving, which also seems to be on the rise.
In city traffic, there's a lot less time to react; it's why us lobster plates get honked at and cut off when trying to wend our way through the streets of Boston to the walls surrounding Fenway Park.
Apparently the graph is showing the rate of change of a ratio, which is confusing, and leaves out information - the totals. Why not just show the the raw numbers per population - viewers can draw their own conclusions about rates of change.
There’s a disproportionate number of African Americans killed in traffic accidents, at least since the pandemic. Since then, the majority of the increase in traffic deaths has been among African Americans.
“The number of Black people killed in traffic crashes rose 23% in 2020 compared to the year prior, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.”
“In 2020, white people had the largest number of traffic deaths at 29,092, but the number increased by just 4% from 2019.”
Not sure what Mr. Drum’s ratio comparison was for, but could demographics between urban/rural explain some of the differences?
2012 BLM began, articles about cops saying they don’t police black areas as much, protests, sideshows, etc… I dunno.
Design, design, design:
Streets and stroads are all more dangerously designed than they have been. This includes the design philosophy that funnels cars (and therefore creates heavier traffic) rather than having a connected street grid.
Vehicles are far more lethal than they used to be. On top of that, consumer preferences for these vehicles has risen (compared to sedans, and even newer sedans are more lethal with taller/boxier front ends).
GPS/Maps algorithms are not designed well, and do not notify drivers very well. They've inculcated habits into people of being extremely erratic, and thinking that's normal/OK, as opposed to having habits like taking the next turn and turning around if you miss your turn/exit (rather than behaving dangerously; also keep in mind that design fuckup number 1 from above, with the lack of a connected grid, disincentivizes drivers from doing this as well).
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Here's a far-fetched hypothesis. Supposition: there are more new cars on the road in urban areas (skewing high tech) than rural. And there's all this modern collision avoidance warnings in the new cars. The people driving the newer ones think those in the older ones will be warned when they are not, and the people in the newer cars will do unsafe things, zooming around a car backing up, say.
Kevin, I wonder if there's a % of those fatalities that are the result of accidents involving a care and either a pedestrian or a bicycle?
And of course, there's always the change in how things are counted events; if those pedestrian/bicycle deaths weren't included before 2013, and began being counted after (or some other counting change), you have your answer.