Road deaths decreased in 2024 but remain above pre-COVID levels
A rare spot of good news today: For the second year in a row, US roads got a little safer. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published its early estimate of road deaths in 2024; 39,345 people lost their lives, which is a 3.8 percent decrease from the 40,901 deaths that occurred on US roads in 2023.
The problem started with the pandemic; although road traffic dried up, the death rate leapt by 20 percent.
There’s no single cause, and studies have identified multiple contributing factors: empty roads designed to practically encourage speeding, little to no enforcement of traffic laws by the police, a general sense of fatalism in the face of public health restrictions that few Americans had ever contemplated in recent times, and car companies making big trucks and SUVs with high hoods, which are much more deadly to pedestrians and other vulnerable road users in a crash.
