Hit-and-run deaths have grown steadily in the last 15 years as a share of traffic deaths. Victims of hit-and-runs are also increasingly pedestrians and cyclists. In 2020, 69.6% of hit-and-run deaths were either pedestrians or cyclists, compared with 61.1% in 2006. Roughly one in four pedestrian deaths in 2020 was a hit-and-run.
“The [hit-and-run] statistics are bad. But it’s all part of the larger problem of pedestrian safety. That’s a crisis,” Julia Griswold, a traffic safety researcher focused on pedestrians and bicyclists at the University of California-Berkeley, told CNN Business.
Hitting a pedestrian isn’t always a crime but leaving the scene of a crash that causes an injury is.
Murky causes
Traffic safety experts say it’s not clear why we’ve seen the uptick in traffic deaths, including hit-and-runs, but the pandemic, speeding, impaired driving, and the nation’s car-focused transportation system may all be factors.
“Our roads are essentially like airport runways, strips of concrete that invite driving at breakneck speed,” Kavi Bhalla, a University of Chicago health professor who studies transportation systems, told CNN Business. Roads are narrower in the rest of the developed world, he said, which reduces driving speeds.
The US increase in 2020 makes it an outlier compared to other developed nations, which haven’t seen a similar uptick, according to Jake Nelson, AAA’s director of traffic safety advocacy and research.
“There’s something different about that small proportion of drivers who are now driving more that’s changing risk on the road overall,” Nelson said.
The increased dangers on US roads in 2020 did not disappear in 2021.
Early data shows that during the period of 2021 that overlaps with the onset of the pandemic in 2020, April through September, deaths per mile declined compared to the prior year. But overall traffic deaths per mile in the first nine months of 2021 increased marginally from 2020.
Public transportation provides transport to people who should not be on the road, for example those who might be intoxicated or have suspended licenses, Schneider said. In cases in which an impaired driver opts to drive, “Transit would’ve been a safer mode for them and everybody else,” he said.
Alcohol and impaired driving fatalities grew 14% in 2020, outpacing the 7.2% increase in overall traffic deaths when compared with 2019.
Thinking from a system level
The US Department of Transportation released a National Roadway Safety Strategy in January, calling the status quo on American roads unacceptable and preventable.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration plans to propose changes to the new car assessment program that may emphasize safety features that protect people both inside and outside vehicles. In 2020, 34% of traffic deaths occurred outside vehicles, a rate that’s increased steadily since hitting a low of 20% in 1997.
The agency has also said it’ll develop rules for requiring automatic emergency braking for pedestrians on new passenger vehicles, but not heavy trucks.
“The engineer can’t design something and say, ‘I followed the book and therefore I don’t have any responsibility after this,'” Rebecca Sanders, the founder of Safe Streets Research & Consulting, told CNN Business.
Sanders and other traffic safety experts have called the approach promising. She also cautioned there’s a risk that the safe system approach becomes “another slogan” rather than meaningful change.
“Some folks have viewed ‘Vision Zero’ as ‘oh that’s another slogan,'” Sanders said. “Complete streets, Vision Zero, okay now we’re at safe systems.”
