Reckless Driving

 The trend has been obvious to me for some time. Every time I drive now I notice more reckless driving.

 

It is most noticeable on the highways. I am happily tootling along when suddenly somebody driving at an unsafe speed passes me. The car continues its course, dodging and weaving between lanes. But I know what usually follows. A second car comes along doing exactly the same thing. They are racing.

 

I am amazed at how these drivers seem to survive. I witness the aftermath of more and more accidents on the roads, but somehow I expect these lunatics to crash almost immediately. Whenever somebody reckless passes me, I instinctively slow down, just in case I am about to become part of a pile up.

 

These highway races are the obvious manifestation, but other examples of recklessness exist as well. I am noticing more drivers jumping lights and taking illegal turns. It seems that whenever I peer into another car, I see a driver more interested in their mobile phone than the road. And drivers are angrier too. Nowadays there is invariably a honk when a light changes to green, even when a dozen stationary cars are preventing progress.

 

I looed up a few statistics and they supported my anecdotal observations. Traffic fatalities in the US enjoyed a steady decline between 2006 and 2019, before increasing in 2020 and again sharply in 2021. The increase in 2020 occurred despite a drop in road usage due to the pandemic.

 

What might be causing this? As with so much else, the pandemic is an obvious place to start. Last March we suddenly experienced empty roads. Speedsters could have more fun. The cops had other things to worry about. The reckless got away with it and speed became a habit. Perhaps a general feeling of despair and a sense of devaluation of life added to the recklessness. The new habits persisted as the traffic came back to the roads. The result is mounting fatalities.

 

This explanation seems to make some sense. But then I compared the US statistics with Europe. I could not find much data about 2021, but 2020 saw a marked decline in road deaths in Europe. Clearly there were fewer of these desperate racers there, or if not then fewer of them were killing themselves.

 

These statistics match with other areas of human progress. Fifty years ago the US was ahead of most European countries. Twenty-five years ago it was in the middle of the pack, and ten years ago at the bottom. Since then the gap has only grown and the last two years have seen an acceleration in its widening. This is similar to trends in life expectancy overall, violent deaths, maternal mortality, educational attainment and a host of other areas.

 

So what might be behind this? It is possible to come up with a few theories.

 

We can start with the state of the infrastructure. The roads in the USA are in a terrible state, filled with potholes, poorly lit and littered with intrinsically unsafe junctions. Europe seems to do a better job of progressively eliminating these death traps. Perhaps the Biden infrastructure infusion will help, but I am not holding my breath. While the roads are so bad, reckless driving is more likely to lead to catastrophic outcomes.

 

We can add ingrained driving habits. Lane discipline here is almost non-existent. On a highway there is almost no concept of a slow or fast lane, merely lanes to choose between. The result is that racing becomes more fun, yet more perilous. Why has there been so little effort to encourage better behaviour?

 

There is minimal enforcement at the very front end, with driving tests. The physical test here requires almost literally driving around the block and parking. In Holland and elsewhere only drivers ready to face the roads safely are permitted to drive, and car ownership, including petrol, is more expensive. The reckless are usually young, poor and immature. In Europe these people are not driving at all.

 

Then there is enforcement. The police here are everywhere – except, it seems, patrolling the highways. In Europe I suspect these racers would be pulled up fairly quickly and be off the road for an extended period. More cameras are coming in, but far behind Europe and more for political theatre than anything else. The racers know where the cameras are, and Waze and other apps even tell them where to expect police – surely a travesty? With the technology available today, enforcement should be much better than it is. It is probably toxic politics that stops it.

 

I am disappointed in the insurance companies. Some seem to be embracing technology, but it is far too slow. Years ago I had an idea of an app that would allow everyday drivers to report the plate numbers of reckless drivers in real time. For me it is still a good idea waiting for insurance companies to take up. One result of the current US insurance climate, dominated by accident chasing lawyers filling the TV screens, is very high premiums, so high that reckless people, who may be the reckless drivers, don’t bother with insurance at all.

 

That leads to societal factors. Driving recklessly on unsafe roads is placing a low value of ones own life, as well as on the lives of everyone else. This implies a degree of desperation, or disconnection. Many communities here are places of despair and disdain. The one thing many youngsters locked into such environments seem to be able to afford is a cheap souped-up second hand car. Add in fast food and drugs, and disaster lurks. Reducing this is just one of many hidden benefits of a welfare and equity based polity – and the benefits flow to those of us caught in crossfire, reducing the risk death on the road and lowering premiums, as well as to the disadvantaged.

 

Then there is the freedom factor. The land of the free has produced a set of people who consider their freedom to mean doing whatever the heck they like, whatever the impact of anybody else. The Trump crowd epitomise this, and the vaccine refuseniks use such specious arguments. I often find myself arguing that refusing to be vaccinated is similar to refusing to follow stop signs or to drive on the allotted side of the road. Well, these reckless drivers are basically following that mantra. Much of the USA could find value from a crash course in understanding what freedom really means, before they experience a crash of a very different kind. 

 

Many of my blogs cast blame on Hollywood, and in this instance I will extend that to video games. Reckless driving in the real world is an extension of what many kids have been spending their time doing in the virtual arena during the pandemic. The difference of course is that computer games can’t kill you, but I wonder how many kids give this inconvenient fact as much consideration as they should. Movies don’t help when protagonists seem to be increasingly immortal.

 

Finally I wonder about the role of journalists. I had to work moderately hard to find my road accident statistics this morning. Occasionally we see reports or read articles about multiple pile-ups, especially if they offer a good picture or sentimental story, but I would like to see more focus on the underlying trends and issues. In the USA, there is also little effort, by journalists or seemingly by anybody else, to compare and learn from other countries. I wonder how many Americans realise what a dangerous society they live in compared with European peers.

 

It is hard to conclude which of these factors play a role, and especially which ones have led to the recent comparative decline in US road safety. But there is plenty of ammunition here in terms of ideas for campaigns to improve matters. Bill de Blasio started with a blaze of good intentions with his vision zero initiative, but as his term closes I hear fewer strong words and see less meaningful action, and the terrible results speak for themselves.

 

It is also worth noting that road safety is just one of many extreme sports we are forced to play by choosing to live here. The many other lagging areas will have overlapping sets of root causes, and the same frustrating lack of priority given to them by politicians, civil servants, journalists, or really anybody else.