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Why would COVID/lockdowns have “changed the way people drive?” Any proposed mechanism? Seems more likely you had a lot of shifting around of people’s driving (

Why would COVID/lockdowns have “changed the way people drive?” Any proposed mechanism? Seems more likely you had a lot of shifting around of people’s driving (e.g. city dwellers moving to suburbs)

toomuchtodo 3y ago
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9342743/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9342743/ https://www.google.com/search?q=people+driving+more+aggressive+after+Covid https://www.google.com/search?q=people+driving+more+aggressi...
- ethanbond 3y ago
  This doesn’t answer my question. It just says people claim [other] drivers are more aggressive than before.
leroman 3y ago
The post COVID era is more stressful for sure.. (pandemic, inflation, war,?)
mywittyname 3y ago
It coincides with the general rise in anti-social behavior that happened during and after lockdowns. There's definitely a lot of people reporting a change in driving attitudes. During covid, people went fucking nuts. There for a while, it was a source of local news articles.
westpfelia 3y ago
I dont have an answer for why. Just it has. I live in a major city in the midwest and its wild how often I see people drive with zero regard for anyone else. Running red lights and almost hitting someone, cutting people off, swerving in traffic erratically to be faster. Its honestly scary some days.
- droopyEyelids 3y ago
  My experience mirrors yours perfectly. When the lockdowns started, people began to drive "crazier" for lack of a better term. I hesitate to speculate as to what caused it, but the difference was as clear as night and day.
  - LeifCarrotson 3y ago
    My anecdote is remarkably similar. I worked from home for a couple months, then had to mask up for a couple of service calls on essential production lines... There was a massive step function between late February in 2020 and May 2020 on the roads from Michigan to Indiana and back. Coworkers and customers who told me they used to go 79mph in the left lane (because it was unlikely to earn a cheap 2-point ticket instead of 81+ which was a more probable and more expensive 4-point ticket) but now bragged about driving 90+ or hitting "triple digits". It was kind of like talking to a religious fundamentalist who can't understand how unbelievers restrain themselves without the Ten Commandments and threat of torture in the afterlife providing consequences for theft, murder, and adultery. I've never gotten a ticket and had no idea what the penalties were, the legal consequences were never a part of my reason for not driving unsafely. Speed limits and traffic enforcement had been fully suspended, and people drove however they wanted to. It also felt like there was some griping about being part of the unlucky few who had to risk their lives for the sake of those who got to stay home in safety and comfort with all their necessities delivered. My brother-in-law's laughing response to my description of my service call drive is etched in my memory. He'd been massively busy delivering pizzas, and after hearing about how I'd had my doors blown off, he said "Welcome to the apocalypse, we drive fast now!"
  - InSteady 3y ago
    I'm acutely aware of it as a bike commuter. It has saved my neck on a few occasions in the past three years since I have adopted the assumption that everyone in a vehicle is intentionally trying to kill me. It seems like it's a combo of impatience + lapses in attention more than anything else, but something has to be fueling it because it is consistently worse now than it has ever been in my 15 years of biking for transport. Pre-emptive braking with the right of way has saved my ass more times that I can count.
wussboy 3y ago
Less congestion means vehicles can reach higher speeds which means more fatal accidents. Congestion generally works to keep vehicle speeds slower and therefore safer.
conductr 3y ago
The roads were wide open for 2+ years, people got used to driving very fast and not really paying attention to their surroundings because there wasn't much other traffic to start with. People started running red lights because not other traffic to wait on. You could drive recklessly without much risk. Now people are still driving recklessly but have a lot more cars and activity around them. One thing that I've noticed is people moved to a suburb or took a new job that was a reasonable commute at the time. Now that traffic came back, it's not a reasonable commute anymore so they're trying to drive like crazy to get back and forth.
- saiya-jin 3y ago
  By definition this should be a very small subset of drivers, since before as you claim 'roads were empty'. If most drivers stayed at home they should not got those bad habits. Very surreal this discussion, very US specific too. Here in Europe, in past 3 years tons of new cycling infrastructure, either wider roads or parts of roads taken from cars and given to cyclists (ie 1 lane instead of 2 lane roads). The goal isn't to move traffic asap, but rather make coming into cities as annoying as possible, so key intersections have in incoming directions green light ie for 10 seconds. And no, not seeing any increase in aggression neither. But then again Europe is massive and culturally extremely diverse, and I haven't visited more than 10 countries in past 3 years so somewhere this may be valid, but its not an overall trend.
  - conductr 3y ago
    The article being discussed is US specific. Frequency of driving was reduced but when you did drive, the roads were empty. The people who did continue to drive daily was not insignificant (maybe 10-30% of people, guessing IDK) and may be the ones creating the problems. Eg. in heavy traffic if 5% of vehicles are driving reckless, it's bad.
- cryptonector 3y ago
  There was (and still is) greatly reduced traffic enforcement as well.
jeffbee 3y ago
It has changed the population of drivers on the road. Wealthy, highly educated professionals are driving less because they work at home more. "Essential workers" are driving as much or more. They are biased toward poorer and less educated people, who are also as a population worse drivers with worse vehicles compared to the population staying at home. These shifts in driver population are more than enough to account for the change.
- strix_varius 3y ago
  > These shifts in driver population are more than enough to account for the change. This is an interesting and maybe even plausible hypothesis, but it lacks any data whatsoever for the final claim.
Timon3 3y ago
The rise in traffic deaths coincides with laws passed that allow drivers to kill pedestrians if they feel threatened by them. Both this, and the charged language used by politicians on this topic, will most likely play part in this increase. Social and political backing for your fear usually doesn't help reduce it.
- kneebonian 3y ago
  > with laws passed that allow drivers to kill pedestrians if they feel threatened by them. Can you cite a source on this I've never heard anything like this.
  - kaitai 3y ago
    The poster is most likely referring to laws like those in Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis's "anti-riot" bill, which was passed but eventually found unconstitutional. It gave civil protection to anyone who ran over protesters with a vehicle. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt also signed such a bill, House Bill 1674 in 2021, which says that people who run over protesters if they "feel threatened" can't be held civilly or criminally liable. North Dakota (HB 1203), North Carolina (HB 330), Florida, Tennessee, Rhode Island, and Texas also proposed similar bills. It is worth noting that several of the bills do say that if a driver wilfully runs over a protester, it's not ok, though language varies.
  - nayuki 3y ago
    https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/18/us/legislation-protects-drivers-injure-protesters/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/18/us/legislation-protects-drive... , https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/22/us/oklahoma-law-drivers-protesters/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/22/us/oklahoma-law-drivers-prote...
    - abduhl 3y ago
      It appears that none of the laws in your first article were ever passed?
e40 3y ago
The "defund the police" movement that happened just before Covid has contributed to police pulling back enforcement of all sorts of things. Also, many cities have a "no chase" rule for police now because of high-profile crashes which killed people. Guessing the lawsuit payouts were large and contributed to the decisions. I think people realized there are no consequences so decided to do what the heck they wanted.
- bearjaws 3y ago
  All while many states have increased funding. Here in Florida the cops are complete dead weight, they used to enforce DUIs religiously Friday / Saturday night. Now you will barely see anyone pulled over and definitely a marked increase in suspected DUI drivers in the early hours (2-4am). We literally have people planning open street races and shut downs on Facebook groups, and the cops do absolutely nothing.
  - e40 3y ago
    Side shows in the Bay Area are incredibly common now and sometimes, in the middle of the night, go on for an hour or more. In the summer, I can hear them miles away, due to the still air and open windows. It's nuts. And, when I drive around town, you can see the tire tracks in the middle of intersections, marking where the side shows were. Dozens of places in the areas I drive, which isn't far or often.
- kpennell 3y ago
  In SF, enforcement of traffic laws has been steadily declining since 2014. It wasn't a covid thing: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/s-f-supervisor-wants-police-increase-traffic-18115526.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/s-f-supervisor-w... (they are trying to get them to do their jobs again but it's really tough)
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  > The "defund the police" movement that happened just before Covid has contributed to police pulling back enforcement of all sorts of things. How? That movement failed and police have more funding now. If you're paying them more and they're doing less that's a problem between y'all. You got what you wanted you don't also get to blame us.
sp332 3y ago
Physical brain damage. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12VbMkvqUF9eSggJsdsFEjKs5x0ABxQJi5tvfzJIDd3U/edit#gid=1723393104 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12VbMkvqUF9eSggJsdsFE... Edit: My point isn't to argue about all the studies listed, this is just why I think brain damage is a plausible reason for the population-wide decrease in car driving skill.
- a_wild_dandan 3y ago
  Does this compilation include negative studies, or only studies with positive results (i.e. publication bias)?
bradford 3y ago
A proposal that I haven't seen discussed in other responses: COVID lockdowns saw a rise in home delivery services. The drivers in this gig economy are financially incentivized to go fast. Lockdowns initially enabled them to go fast, and, once the expectation was in place, it's hard to roll back. (just my opinion, I don't have data point to back it up, curious if anyone who participate as a delivery driver could confirm/deny).
kpennell 3y ago
Social contract frayed...
briandear 3y ago
You have criminals getting out on low or no bond in higher numbers. You have serious issues with felony bond violations as well. You have reduced police enforcement. Your typical felon doesn’t car as much about traffic laws. https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/criminal-justice/2021/04/08/395247/on-houstons-felony-bond-violators-general-agreement-on-the-problem-but-not-a-solution/?amp=1 https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/criminal-ju...
- InSteady 3y ago
  [flagged]

toomuchtodo 3y ago

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9342743/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9342743/ https://www.google.com/search?q=people+driving+more+aggressive+after+Covid https://www.google.com/search?q=people+driving+more+aggressi...

ethanbond 3y ago
This doesn’t answer my question. It just says people claim [other] drivers are more aggressive than before.

leroman 3y ago

The post COVID era is more stressful for sure.. (pandemic, inflation, war,?)

mywittyname 3y ago

It coincides with the general rise in anti-social behavior that happened during and after lockdowns. There's definitely a lot of people reporting a change in driving attitudes. During covid, people went fucking nuts. There for a while, it was a source of local news articles.

westpfelia 3y ago

I dont have an answer for why. Just it has. I live in a major city in the midwest and its wild how often I see people drive with zero regard for anyone else. Running red lights and almost hitting someone, cutting people off, swerving in traffic erratically to be faster. Its honestly scary some days.

droopyEyelids 3y ago
My experience mirrors yours perfectly. When the lockdowns started, people began to drive "crazier" for lack of a better term. I hesitate to speculate as to what caused it, but the difference was as clear as night and day.
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago
  My anecdote is remarkably similar. I worked from home for a couple months, then had to mask up for a couple of service calls on essential production lines... There was a massive step function between late February in 2020 and May 2020 on the roads from Michigan to Indiana and back. Coworkers and customers who told me they used to go 79mph in the left lane (because it was unlikely to earn a cheap 2-point ticket instead of 81+ which was a more probable and more expensive 4-point ticket) but now bragged about driving 90+ or hitting "triple digits". It was kind of like talking to a religious fundamentalist who can't understand how unbelievers restrain themselves without the Ten Commandments and threat of torture in the afterlife providing consequences for theft, murder, and adultery. I've never gotten a ticket and had no idea what the penalties were, the legal consequences were never a part of my reason for not driving unsafely. Speed limits and traffic enforcement had been fully suspended, and people drove however they wanted to. It also felt like there was some griping about being part of the unlucky few who had to risk their lives for the sake of those who got to stay home in safety and comfort with all their necessities delivered. My brother-in-law's laughing response to my description of my service call drive is etched in my memory. He'd been massively busy delivering pizzas, and after hearing about how I'd had my doors blown off, he said "Welcome to the apocalypse, we drive fast now!"
- InSteady 3y ago
  I'm acutely aware of it as a bike commuter. It has saved my neck on a few occasions in the past three years since I have adopted the assumption that everyone in a vehicle is intentionally trying to kill me. It seems like it's a combo of impatience + lapses in attention more than anything else, but something has to be fueling it because it is consistently worse now than it has ever been in my 15 years of biking for transport. Pre-emptive braking with the right of way has saved my ass more times that I can count.

wussboy 3y ago

Less congestion means vehicles can reach higher speeds which means more fatal accidents. Congestion generally works to keep vehicle speeds slower and therefore safer.

conductr 3y ago

The roads were wide open for 2+ years, people got used to driving very fast and not really paying attention to their surroundings because there wasn't much other traffic to start with. People started running red lights because not other traffic to wait on. You could drive recklessly without much risk. Now people are still driving recklessly but have a lot more cars and activity around them. One thing that I've noticed is people moved to a suburb or took a new job that was a reasonable commute at the time. Now that traffic came back, it's not a reasonable commute anymore so they're trying to drive like crazy to get back and forth.

saiya-jin 3y ago
By definition this should be a very small subset of drivers, since before as you claim 'roads were empty'. If most drivers stayed at home they should not got those bad habits. Very surreal this discussion, very US specific too. Here in Europe, in past 3 years tons of new cycling infrastructure, either wider roads or parts of roads taken from cars and given to cyclists (ie 1 lane instead of 2 lane roads). The goal isn't to move traffic asap, but rather make coming into cities as annoying as possible, so key intersections have in incoming directions green light ie for 10 seconds. And no, not seeing any increase in aggression neither. But then again Europe is massive and culturally extremely diverse, and I haven't visited more than 10 countries in past 3 years so somewhere this may be valid, but its not an overall trend.
- conductr 3y ago
  The article being discussed is US specific. Frequency of driving was reduced but when you did drive, the roads were empty. The people who did continue to drive daily was not insignificant (maybe 10-30% of people, guessing IDK) and may be the ones creating the problems. Eg. in heavy traffic if 5% of vehicles are driving reckless, it's bad.
cryptonector 3y ago
There was (and still is) greatly reduced traffic enforcement as well.

jeffbee 3y ago

It has changed the population of drivers on the road. Wealthy, highly educated professionals are driving less because they work at home more. "Essential workers" are driving as much or more. They are biased toward poorer and less educated people, who are also as a population worse drivers with worse vehicles compared to the population staying at home. These shifts in driver population are more than enough to account for the change.

strix_varius 3y ago
> These shifts in driver population are more than enough to account for the change. This is an interesting and maybe even plausible hypothesis, but it lacks any data whatsoever for the final claim.

Timon3 3y ago

The rise in traffic deaths coincides with laws passed that allow drivers to kill pedestrians if they feel threatened by them. Both this, and the charged language used by politicians on this topic, will most likely play part in this increase. Social and political backing for your fear usually doesn't help reduce it.

kneebonian 3y ago
> with laws passed that allow drivers to kill pedestrians if they feel threatened by them. Can you cite a source on this I've never heard anything like this.
- kaitai 3y ago
  The poster is most likely referring to laws like those in Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis's "anti-riot" bill, which was passed but eventually found unconstitutional. It gave civil protection to anyone who ran over protesters with a vehicle. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt also signed such a bill, House Bill 1674 in 2021, which says that people who run over protesters if they "feel threatened" can't be held civilly or criminally liable. North Dakota (HB 1203), North Carolina (HB 330), Florida, Tennessee, Rhode Island, and Texas also proposed similar bills. It is worth noting that several of the bills do say that if a driver wilfully runs over a protester, it's not ok, though language varies.
- nayuki 3y ago
  https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/18/us/legislation-protects-drivers-injure-protesters/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/18/us/legislation-protects-drive... , https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/22/us/oklahoma-law-drivers-protesters/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/22/us/oklahoma-law-drivers-prote...
  - abduhl 3y ago
    It appears that none of the laws in your first article were ever passed?

e40 3y ago

The "defund the police" movement that happened just before Covid has contributed to police pulling back enforcement of all sorts of things. Also, many cities have a "no chase" rule for police now because of high-profile crashes which killed people. Guessing the lawsuit payouts were large and contributed to the decisions. I think people realized there are no consequences so decided to do what the heck they wanted.

bearjaws 3y ago
All while many states have increased funding. Here in Florida the cops are complete dead weight, they used to enforce DUIs religiously Friday / Saturday night. Now you will barely see anyone pulled over and definitely a marked increase in suspected DUI drivers in the early hours (2-4am). We literally have people planning open street races and shut downs on Facebook groups, and the cops do absolutely nothing.
- e40 3y ago
  Side shows in the Bay Area are incredibly common now and sometimes, in the middle of the night, go on for an hour or more. In the summer, I can hear them miles away, due to the still air and open windows. It's nuts. And, when I drive around town, you can see the tire tracks in the middle of intersections, marking where the side shows were. Dozens of places in the areas I drive, which isn't far or often.
kpennell 3y ago
In SF, enforcement of traffic laws has been steadily declining since 2014. It wasn't a covid thing: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/s-f-supervisor-wants-police-increase-traffic-18115526.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/s-f-supervisor-w... (they are trying to get them to do their jobs again but it's really tough)
giraffe_lady 3y ago
> The "defund the police" movement that happened just before Covid has contributed to police pulling back enforcement of all sorts of things. How? That movement failed and police have more funding now. If you're paying them more and they're doing less that's a problem between y'all. You got what you wanted you don't also get to blame us.

sp332 3y ago

Physical brain damage. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12VbMkvqUF9eSggJsdsFEjKs5x0ABxQJi5tvfzJIDd3U/edit#gid=1723393104 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12VbMkvqUF9eSggJsdsFE... Edit: My point isn't to argue about all the studies listed, this is just why I think brain damage is a plausible reason for the population-wide decrease in car driving skill.

a_wild_dandan 3y ago
Does this compilation include negative studies, or only studies with positive results (i.e. publication bias)?

bradford 3y ago

A proposal that I haven't seen discussed in other responses: COVID lockdowns saw a rise in home delivery services. The drivers in this gig economy are financially incentivized to go fast. Lockdowns initially enabled them to go fast, and, once the expectation was in place, it's hard to roll back. (just my opinion, I don't have data point to back it up, curious if anyone who participate as a delivery driver could confirm/deny).

kpennell 3y ago

Social contract frayed...

briandear 3y ago

You have criminals getting out on low or no bond in higher numbers. You have serious issues with felony bond violations as well. You have reduced police enforcement. Your typical felon doesn’t car as much about traffic laws. https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/criminal-justice/2021/04/08/395247/on-houstons-felony-bond-violators-general-agreement-on-the-problem-but-not-a-solution/?amp=1 https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/criminal-ju...

InSteady 3y ago
[flagged]