Less people on the road means less fatal accidents, right? Wrong.

If there was one silver lining to the last year and a half, we all thought it would be less traffic accidents and less people dying in car accidents. Unfortunately, that was not what actually happened here.

The death toll rose

According to the North Carolina Department of Transportation, when comparing 2020 to 2019, there was a 10 percent increase in the number of people that died in car accidents. This is the highest number of death since 2007. This number is surprising because, according to by the Governor’s Highway Safety Program, the number of drivers on the road declined by an average of about 20 percent, but peaked, at times, by nearly 40 percent.

How does this happen?

Bluntly, it is because people became more reckless and speed increased because there were so few cars on the road. In a perverse twist of events, since there were less people on the road, people felt safer and more comfortable to drive faster and faster, and they were not paying as close attention to their surroundings. Some experts noted it was like people felt invulnerable to car accidents.

We know this because of the increase in speeding violations and other various reckless driving violations. And, those speeding tickets are for higher speeds, and unfortunately, higher speed car accidents lead to more serious injuries and death. Even incidents of impaired driving increased, along with seatbelt violations, which only further exacerbated fatal accidents.

After a car accident

For Fayetteville, North Carolina, residents or their families that were involved in a car accident, call an attorney immediately. North Carolina has laws that allow victims and their families to recover from these negligent and reckless drivers.