The cause was easy enough to identify: Data parsed by Kuhls and her colleagues showed that drivers were speeding more, on highways and on surface streets, and plowing through intersections with an alarming frequency. Conversely, seatbelt use was down, resulting in thousands of injuries to unrestrained drivers and passengers. After a decade of steady decline, intoxicated-driving arrests had rebounded to near historic highs.
… The relationship between car size and injury rates is still being studied, but early research on the American appetite for horizon-blotting machinery points in precisely the direction you’d expect: The bigger the vehicle, the less visibility it affords, and the more destruction it can wreak.
Another hypothesis: American stroads are an unusually deadly design. Before the pandemic, though, rush hour limited speeds and artificially made the roads look safer than they were - it’s hard to kill people in stop and go traffic. The increase in hybrid and remote work since the pandemic means rush hour still isn’t back to pre pandemic levels.
But its happening on all road tupes, not just ‘stroads’
Is the increase in accidents even across all road types?
The data is not broken down by road type.
Injecting the anti stroad agenda helps nothing. Its not relevant here. It mutes whatever truths the anti stroad people have and thier advocates get categorized into annoying wackjob category.