No, it’s true. People started driving like they were fleeing zombies during the pandemic, and the behaviors stuck.

With the roads deserted people went faster and more carelessly. When things recovered and roads got crowded they didn’t tone their driving back down.

I do insurance things. It’s well known in the field.

I suspect vision zero policy and phones are also major contributors. Traffic Engineers across the country are setting traffic lights to reduce the flow of traffic to 20mph without changing the actual speed limit. It’s making people crazy.

Strange! Where I live traffic lights are used for the opposite purpose: they are set up to improve flow by creating green waves that mean ypu don't have to care about orthogonal traffic.

If the point was the reduce the flow, why wouldn't you make a roundabout?

> If the point was the reduce the flow, why wouldn't you make a roundabout?

Roundabouts have far higher throughput than junctions with traffic lights.

Not quite, traffic lights have the highest throughput if done properly (by quite a margin), but compared to the US style of lights they do.

But only because they allow for higher density, not higher speeds, which it seems GP was discussing.

> Strange! Where I live traffic lights are used for the opposite purpose: they are set up to improve flow by creating green waves that mean ypu don't have to care about orthogonal traffic.

story: An out of state tech visiting our job site greeted us with "What the hell is wrong with the traffic lights in Florida!?" This was SW FL and I was a little confused because he had driven thru one of the most benign counties. I might be conditioned though.

Just north of Tampa is a county where most traffic lights are timed to insure you reach the next one on the yellow. I've traveled thru it regularly for 30 years. Between 20 and 15 years ago it reached ~as bad as possible status and there it remains.

Adding awful to bad are the drivers who've realized they can defeat much of this timing with sufficient speed.

That is what should be done, but it’s becoming rare. Bangerter Highway in Utah comes to mind as a good one. I know Colorado is a state big on vision zero policy, where if you go the posted speed you will hit every single light.

They aren't fixing the real problem.

Want ZERO fatalities? ISOLATE the Pedestrians from the cars entirely. Build it like Disney World does.

In urban areas, that is coming, but by banning/severely limiting car use in cities.

It can’t come soon enough.

The lockdowns brought about a pandemic of selfishness. If x% of the people didn't like lockdown rules and they broke them and they were fine, y% of those probably absorbed the lesson that some other rules are useless.

It didn't help that most, maybe all, governmental authorities were improvising their COVID response, some other percentage of people lost their fear/trust in authorities that way.

Ha, societal breakdown indeed...

FWIW there's some insurance claims data to suggest that driving got worse in 2020 on average in the US.

Here in Ireland, this is visible in road deaths, which have risen significantly this year, reversing a trend of low road deaths as a result of an enormously successful road safety campaign over the previous 30 years.

There's noticeably more serious accidents too, although the data won't be available until mid-2024 to confirm.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_road_traffic_acciden...

Notably, Ireland achieved a lot of their reductions in road deaths by taking all the people walking and biking and putting them in a car instead. For instance, compared to the mid-80's about 250% as many kids are driven to school, half as many take public transport, and half as many walk or bike.

Certainly, when I lived there Ireland was a terrible place to bike or walk.

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cp6ci/p6c...

No, studies have shown that the vaccine improved peoples driving,

https://fortune.com/well/2022/12/13/covid-unvaccinated-great...

The state of research surrounding the pandemic has been appalling. Th line between science and propaganda is very blurred.

That can't be causuality? Probably people that don't take vaccines are more reckless overall.

'Of course, skipping a COVID vaccine does not mean that someone will get into a car crash. Instead, the authors theorize that people who resist public health recommendations might also “neglect basic road safety guidelines.”'

More reckless by refusing a rushed product using a novel technology never before approved for human use?

https://openvaers.com/covid-data

The whole thing is junk science.

It was in the process of being approved.

Yes, it was rushed. Sometimes rushing is appropriate. They still tested a lot.

Getting covid can be extremely bad even if you survive, and most of the US caught it so far. The vaccine route is the safer route.

With police resources constrained, everyone started driving like insane assholes around here, and it hasn't gone back. I noticed significantly more people cheating the carpool lane, no longer using turn signals, intentionally blowing red lights and stop signs, etc.

Driving culture has changed, at least in this area.