Driving Hasn’t Found Its New Normal Yet – The Energy Bulletin Daily

Memorial Day weekend, the typical start of the U.S. summer driving season, has come and gone. Data on just how much driving Americans did is trickling in, and it’s a bit noisy. Apple mobility trends show searches for directions down only 4% from baseline, but gasoline consumption was 25% to 35% off the numbers from a year earlier. Not only are we far from the old normal in road transport, it seems we’re still quite far from establishing what the new normal will be.

There’s another set of recent data, though, with a positive trend for U.S. driving: annual road traffic fatalities. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 36,120 people died in motor vehicle crashes last year, down 1.2% from 2018, making it the third straight year of declining U.S. traffic fatalities.

Notably, fatalities decreased not just for drivers (down 3% from 2018), but also for passengers (down 4%), motorcyclists (down 1%), “pedalcyclists” (down 3%) and pedestrians (down 2%). That last figure, in particular, is one of the rare decreases in pedestrian fatalities since 2009, and a welcome contrast to the more than 50% increase in the past decade.

Traffic fatalities followed a rather different pattern, rising slightly up to 2005 before dropping significantly during the financial crisis. Fatalities began to pick up as road traffic increased, but with a more significant rate of growth. Now, the two have diverged: vehicle miles (at least through 2019) were up and up, while fatalities decreased three years in a row.

The relative safety of American motor vehicle activity as a measure of fatalities per 100 million miles driven isn’t quite its all-time best, but it’s not far off. Driving is significantly safer than it was even 25 years ago.

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