About half of Americans (49%) say people in their area are driving more dangerously than before the coronavirus pandemic, while only 9% say people are driving more safely, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. What publicly available data there is on the subject suggests that those perceptions may be right, at least in part.
There’s no one definitive data source for how common “dangerous driving” is, or even necessarily agreement on what specific behaviors that involves. Most data on people’s actual (as opposed to self-reported) driving habits comes from encounters with law enforcement – arrests, citations, accident reports and the like. Thus, the resulting data can’t be representative of the entire driving population.
Nonetheless, there’s a fair amount of data indicating that Americans’ driving habits have worsened over the past five years, at least in some ways.
Before the pandemic 10 over the limit was normalized in my area, now it seems 20 over is acceptable, even in school zones. It genuinely feels unsafe when I do the limit on some roads because of the agressive passes and tailgating. We’ve got some speed cameras but they are only effective near the camera, you can literally see the wave of traffic speed up once past it.
What bothers me most is it used to be usual suspects speeding like this, the fancier cars, lifted trucks, and modified shitboxs. Now everyone drives fast and speeds inlcuding the minivans and soccer mom SUVs. It really highlights how ignoring speeding for so long has made a hive mentality of its okay to speed now because everyone does it.