National traffic deaths drop slightly, but officials say they are still too high

After two years of sharp increases during the worst of the pandemic, traffic deaths seem to be leveling off.

Figures released Thursday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated the traffic deaths for 2022 dropped 0.35% to 42,795 despite more driving than the previous two years. Overall, the death rate fell from 1.37 per 100 million vehicle miles driven to 1.35.

Traffic deaths fell or remained nearly steady from the first quarter of 2017 to the third quarter of 2020, when the pandemic spike began. Traffic experts theorize that fewer vehicles on the road encouraged risky drivers to engage in dangerous behavior such as speeding, impaired driving and not wearing seat belts.

That spiked in the second quarter of 2021, when the agency reported deaths rose more than 20% above the same quarter the previous year for the highest quarterly gain since the agency began reporting traffic deaths in 1975.

The agency said preliminary data shows deaths dropped for each of the last three quarters of 2022, but U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said they remain too high. Buttigieg announced a five-pronged strategy in January 2022 to reduce traffic deaths.

“We continue to face a national crisis of traffic deaths on our roadways, and everyone has a role to play in reversing the rise that we experienced in recent years,” he said in a news release. “Through our National Roadway Safety Strategy, we’re strengthening traffic safety across the country and working toward a day when these preventable tragedies are a thing of the past.”

The strategy includes teaching people to be safer drivers, building safer roads, improving vehicle safety, driving at safer speeds and improving medical care for crash victims. Buttigieg has earmarked about $14 billion in federal stimulus funds for road safety programs.

Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association, agreed that more needs to be done to improve roadway safety. In a statement, he noted that pedestrian deaths also reached record levels during the pandemic.

“Any reduction in roadway deaths is positive, but the minor decrease announced by NHTSA follows an unprecedented pandemic-fueled surge in roadway fatalities and dangerous driving,” he said.

“These roadway deaths are heartbreaking, unacceptable and preventable. We will not accept such incremental safety progress after two years of escalating deaths and more dangerous driving on U.S. roads.”

Adkins also used the occasion to push for confirmation of Ann Carroll as NHTSA administrator. She has been serving as acting administrator, but the agency hasn’t had a permanent leader for much of the past six years, which Adkins called “maddening” during the spike of traffic deaths.

The estimates show 27 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico all saw decreases in traffic deaths last year while 23 states had increases. In Pennsylvania, estimates show deaths dropped 3.2% last year, from 1,230 to 1,191, but the state had the 10th most deaths in the country.