Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Car Crashes Down, Fatalities Up in 2020

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James A. Bacon
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Photo credit: Richmond Times-Dispatch

by James A. Bacon

Virginia transportation officials are puzzling over a divergence in road safety statistics during the COVID epidemic last year. The number of crashes on Virginia roads fell 15% to 20% below the level of a normal year while the number of fatalities climbed by 2.4% and serious injuries by 5.3%, reports The Virginia Mercury.

The numbers worsened in what officials termed the “belt, booze and speed” categories, with a 16.3% increase in speed-related deaths ad 13% in “unrestrained” deaths. In crashes in which wearing a seat belt was an option, 56% of the people who died weren’t wearing one.

Traffic safety researchers have indicated that making seatbelt infractions a primary offense in Virginia could save 100 lives a year. Because failure to wear a seatbelt is a secondary offense, drivers can be charged only if they are committing some other infraction. But a bill allowing police to make seatbelt-only stops failed in the Virginia Senate in 2020. Opponents described the proposed legislation as an authoritarian overreach that could have a disproportionate impact on minority drivers.

George Bishop, deputy commissioner at the Department of Motor Vehicles, also told the CTB that Virginia scaled back traffic enforcement during the COVID-19 pandemic. Speeding convictions fell 42% in 2020, which, in the Mercury’s words, were “a sign police may have been trying to limit relatively low-stakes interactions with the public while the virus was spreading.”

Speed-related stops fell 42%. Speed-related deaths rose 16%. It doesn’t take much imagination to see a connection between the two numbers.

DUI arrests decreased in 2020 as well, while alcohol-related fatalities increased 3%.

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27 responses to “Car Crashes Down, Fatalities Up in 2020”

  1. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    Speeding is easy to deal with, without police interactions. So is red light running and a side benefit is catching bad guys via their license plates.

    I’m all for it. Yahoos are running wild these days and no, I don’t think related to race like almost everything else in BR seems to be about these days.

    I call it – “The war on yahoos”.

  2. Brian Leeper Avatar
    Brian Leeper

    I’ve always said that if speed kills, we should have the safest roads in the country here in Northern Virginia.

  3. tmtfairfax Avatar
    tmtfairfax

    We were heading home yesterday afternoon on I-95. Near Fredericksburg we saw a guy on a motorcycle. He was texting. Saw quite a few automobile drivers doing the same thing.

    1. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
      Dick Hall-Sizemore

      Texting on a motorcycle? Gee, idiocy has reached a new low.

      1. WayneS Avatar
        WayneS

        You’ve got that right.

    2. Brian Leeper Avatar
      Brian Leeper

      I was behind a Jeep yesterday. The driver was going below the speed limit, and crossing the double yellow line to the point that the rear differential was over it.

      I thought he was drunk. I was eventually able to see what was up….had a phone in his hand.

      It said 5.9 Hemi on the rear of it. I guess you call that a low-performance driver in a high-performance vehicle?

  4. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    Speed. God it was wonderful driving Rte. 5 last summer.

    YAHOO!

    Now, it’s back to getting stuck behind Oscar Grope again.

    1. Brian Leeper Avatar
      Brian Leeper

      I am convinced that the longest stretch of double-yellow line in the country must be somewhere in Virginia. Rumor has it that some other states actually provide pull-out areas for slower vehicles to pull over and allow others to pass, and the citizens of those states actually utilize them for their intended purpose.

      1. Nancy Naive Avatar
        Nancy Naive

        Texas. I lived there for 3 years and used to take 2-lane blacktop over the interstates everywhere. The roads are 1/2 again as wide and in the wide open spaces the limit was 70 MPH, the same as the interstates.

        Often when coming up on a car, they pull on the shoulder. Still not ideal because you do have to deal with blind hills and curves and half of a car.

        1. Paul Sweet Avatar
          Paul Sweet

          I attended UT in the late 60s. I learned about Texas driving my first weekend when I went for a drive around the countryside outside Austin. I was doing 70 and came up on somebody going way slower. He pulled over on the paved shoulder. I was thinking how neighborly of you, podner when somebody doing around 90 passed me!

          1. Nancy Naive Avatar
            Nancy Naive

            Overdrive was invented by a Texan, I’m sure.

        2. Brian Leeper Avatar
          Brian Leeper

          Texas seems to me to be a state that invests in their infrastructure. Their network of Farm t0 Market roads is quite extensive. They also seem to make extensive use of portland concrete cement, which is more expensive but lasts far longer than asphalt.

          1. Nancy Naive Avatar
            Nancy Naive

            Their concrete roads are like butter, even in the summers. They use the “infinite ribbon” like in California method. Not like here where a sudden expansion heave could rip your suspension apart.

            Their blacktop and other materials suffer. One road I drove had wheel ruts 4 to 6″ deep by August every year, which is interesting for a car with 5″ road clearance.

          2. Brian Leeper Avatar
            Brian Leeper

            Some parts of I66 east of Gainesville have the “infinite ribbon” concrete. That’s the only place I’ve seen it in Virginia (other than possibly the Manassas Drive/28 intersection).

            I remember, before it was redone in portland concrete cement (apparently against the advice of VDOT, who preferred it be done with asphalt), the intersection of Manassas Drive and 28 had ruts that had to be at least 3″ deep.

            The clay soil doesn’t make a good subgrade for asphalt (or much of anything else).

          3. Matt Adams Avatar
            Matt Adams

            You’ve also got the high VA heat that doesn’t a number on asphalt and vehicle weight.

          4. Brian Leeper Avatar
            Brian Leeper

            I also think poor drainage contributes to pavement failures. VDOT will often repave half a lane right next to the ditch because that’s where the pavement always fails, could it be due to poor drainage?? I note that in places where the ditch isn’t at the edge of the pavement, this deterioration does not seem to happen.

          5. energyNOW_Fan Avatar
            energyNOW_Fan

            Re: TX Cement
            Was just the reading the enviro groups saying 150 or so cement plants in Houston, and no zoning there, so of course “unfair” locations for those and all types of industrial plants.

          6. Brian Leeper Avatar
            Brian Leeper

            Where would they prefer these plants to be located????

  5. energyNOW_Fan Avatar
    energyNOW_Fan

    Definitely seems to be an up-tick in speeders. I provided witness this month for the guy in front of me who almost got clobbered by a motorist running a red light at speed. Easily could have been one of the above stats, but luckily the guy in front of me was almost all the way thru the intersection before the other guy came thru the Red. The guy running the Red said he thought he had Green light.

  6. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    These findings are surprising. I would not have been surprised at a drop of 42 percent in speed related stops. After all, there were a lot fewer cars on the road for a lot of 2020. But the increase in deaths and injuries? That is surprising and counterintuitive. The DMV spokesman made the point in his presentation that crashes were down in the first months of 2020, but the fatalities were not.

    My libertarian streak (yes, I do have one) kicks in here. I would oppose mandating the wearing of seat belts. If people are dumb enough to drive or ride in a car without wearing seat belts, that is on them. However, they should be required to have any kids in the car buckled up.

    1. WayneS Avatar
      WayneS

      One thing seatbelts do which I think most people do not consider is hold/retain the user in his seat during a sudden acceleration/deceleration event. And the bottom line is, if the driver of a car is not in the driver’s seat he cannot control the vehicle. If he cannot control the vehicle then he cannot take action to avoid a collision, and colliding with something (or someone) brings in the possibility of hurting others, not merely harming himself.

      For most of my life I was adamantly opposed to mandatory seat belt laws. Then a few years ago I witnessed an accident in which a driver was not wearing a seatbelt when his car entered a sudden lateral slide/skid/spin. He was thrown from the driver’s seat, across the car to the passenger side. His car then crossed the center line and hit an oncoming car head-on. He survived with minor injuries, but one of the occupants in the other car was killed. I have often wondered if that driver might have been able to regain control of his car if he had been wearing a seatbelt and had thereby remained in the driver’s seat throughout the entire event.

      Does the potential for accidents involving the above (or a similar) scenario justify the government mandating seatbelt use for all drivers? My libertarian side still says no, but my “I don’t have a right to harm you except in self-defense” side says seatbelt laws are probably not a bad idea.

      1. Paul Sweet Avatar
        Paul Sweet

        I’ve always used seatbelts and have thought that failure to use them should automatically be considered contributory negligence in case of an accident.

        The feds mandated airbags because of low seatbelt usage, but I doubt they will drop that requirement if they make seatbelt usage mandatory. My car and my wife’s car were both recalled to have the airbags replaced because they had the propellant that could explode.

      2. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
        Dick Hall-Sizemore

        This is one aspect that I had not considered. I do wonder if most drivers, even if restrained by a seat belt, would have the presence of mind to control their cars in the event of a sudden acceleration/deceleration or a sudden slide/skid/spin

    2. Policystudent Avatar
      Policystudent

      I questioned seat belt mandates until I completed some accident research (as in I requested the data directly from Virginia insurers and health care systems and computed my own stats). Not surprisingly, I found more severe injuries, more deaths, and higher insurance claims along accident victims who did not wear a seat belt. I came to similar conclusions for motorcyclists who did not wear helmets. The “AHA” was the staggering societal costs of catastrophic accidents, many of which involve traumatic brain injuries. We are talking six and seven figure bills. The accidents impact taxpayers (long-term disability payments), drivers (insurance premiums), benefitted workers (health insurance premiums), and health care systems (bill write offs). The repercussions are essentially “on all of us.”

  7. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
    James Wyatt Whitehead

    There was once a time in Virginia when the sight of the single blue dome light of State Trooper would make your heart sink. We used to drive 55. Going a hair past was a risk. Now there is almost no fear of a speeding ticket.
    https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a3/3c/e6/a33ce60972c457b902b94369dc2d7977.jpg

    1. Eric the half a troll Avatar
      Eric the half a troll

      The rule of thumb is 9 mph over the limit gets you no ticket 10+ will cost you. The cops will tell you that straight up. It has become a cost/effort/benefit exercise for them. Nothing more.

      1. WayneS Avatar
        WayneS

        You are correct. And I have also found that most cops give motorcycles another 3-5 mph leeway. Of course, some cops actually target motorcycles.

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