AAA says drivers continue to misbehave as fatalities rise

If you feel like the roads around you have been home to pure chaos since the start of the pandemic, you’re not alone — nor are you apparently wrong. With an expected increase in deaths after analyzing the entire year 2021 data, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety The annual index hopes to identify behaviors and attitudes in American drivers that could shed light on the situation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, respondents pointed the finger at distracted and idle drivers even though many of them admitted to engaging in such behavior themselves. Do as I say, not as I do, right?

The 2021 Index shows that American drivers still view the distracting and disruptive driving behavior of others even though they do so themselves. Key example: 92% considered texting while driving “very dangerous” or “extremely dangerous,” while 96% said someone important to them wouldn’t agree if they knew it was happening. However, 26% admitted that they had done so at some point in the 30 days prior to the survey. The trend continued with aggressive driving. 88% consider it ‘too dangerous’ or ‘too dangerous’, 96% think someone might disagree, yet 23% used to do it sometime in the month before driving.

Despite this separation, AAA He says social pressure is one of two powerful influences on people’s decisions to engage in risky driving behavior; The other is perceived danger. If a large part of the population considers an action dangerous and considers it unsafe, people are less inclined to do it. The bad news is that the possibility of getting caught (or worse) seems to have little effect on most drivers’ decision-making.

The study delved into many of the behaviors that fall into the above categories, along with substance-related disabilities and Drowsiness driving. The most common offenses were driving at speeds of 15 mph or more over the highway limit (50.7% of respondents), driving while holding and talking on a mobile device (37.4%) and driving while reading a text message or email on their mobile device screens (36.2%). %). 28.2% also admitted to running at least one red light and 22.9% admitted to running or weaving through traffic.

At the high end of the spectrum, nearly 1 in 5 (18.8%) said they had driven at least once in the past 30 days despite feeling so tired they couldn’t keep their eyes open. Only 7.3% said they drove after driving enough alcohol to qualify for a vehicle A single identity documentAnd 5% admitted to using THC within an hour of getting behind the wheel. This number was higher than the 2020 numbers but, like alcoholism, has been trending downward from 2018-2020.

“The reversal in the frequency with which American drivers engage in risky driving behavior is troubling. While drivers acknowledge that some activities behind the wheel – such as Speeding “And driving is poor, it’s not safe, and many people still engage in these activities anyway,” said Dr. David Yang, executive director of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. “We must be aware of the serious consequences of dangerous driving and lane-changing behaviors.”

As we noted above, there was another major metric going in the wrong direction: traffic deaths. NHTSA An estimated 42,915 people died in car accidents in 2021 – 10.5% increase from 2020. Mind your mirrors there.

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