7 ms·

I worked in the industry recently, with most leading carriers on how they generate LTVs for potential customers from expected frequency, severity, and lifetime.

I worked in the industry recently, with most leading carriers on how they generate LTVs for potential customers from expected frequency, severity, and lifetime. During COVID shutdowns, there was a massive drop in frequency (obviously, hardly anyone was driving) but a significant uptick in severity. This was attributed to higher speeds with emptier roads. After re-opening, frequency is significantly higher per driver than before. So is severity. Everyone I talked to in the industry was convinced this was due to loss of skill during shutdown as well as people driving much more aggressively. This is on top of the serious increase in parts due to supply chain issues. I find it strange that this isn't discussed in the article when it's a pretty widely-held belief in the industry.

wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
I dont know. I only drive once every three months or so. and every once in a while Ill go on a huge roadtrip across the country. I have never noticed any loss in driving skill.
- lostlogin 3y ago
  Assuming you are talking about a loss in your own skills, isn’t this exactly what the OP is describing? If people perceived a change in their own abilities, the problem would likely not exist.
  - darkerside 3y ago
    This, and perhaps parent's driving skill has just been poor for a very long time now. No drop, just sitting at the bottom.
    - Melting_Harps 3y ago
      > This, and perhaps parent's driving skill has just been poor for a very long time now. No drop, just sitting at the bottom. I'm not trying to be mean, but the adage in poker of spotting the fool at the table here applies. And as a person who rides bicycles, motorcycles as well as drives cars, and has driven in the EU with much stricter driving requirements I'd say there has been a massive drop in aptitude over all. So much so that I just want to live a life that allows me to be car-free now. EVs are nice, but having everything I want within walking distance is much more preferable.
      - fransje26 3y ago
        > EVs are nice, but having everything I want within walking distance is much more preferable. Come back to Europe.. ;-)
      - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        that's not been my experience, maybe you just live amongst morons?
  - wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
    Its a car. You turn the wheel and press the two buttons. I've beaten spelunky 1, and 2. Im also sporty and coordinated. I know what good motor skills look and feel like, and what being bad at something feels like. If there is a suspicion of skill loss in the population, i dont know why so many people in this thread would blindly accept that. We should all put our good boy skeptic scientist hats on. Are the changes in chrash severity and frequency even for all types of people? Doubtful. In what age ranges and occupations are the biggest changes in. "People crash more now because sudden population wide skill loss" doesnt even pass the basic sanity test. Im gonna need some evidence.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      > Its a car. You turn the wheel and press the two buttons. Given that summary, I'm not surprised that you cannot detect any degradation in your driving skill during a period of not practicing.
      - noirbot 3y ago
        I don't think it's degradation any more than my skills at golf or basketball degrade in the 6 months between times I play either of them. I'm the baseline level of good enough that I'm competent, but I definitely don't have the skills of someone who practices either daily.
        wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
        Right, and you dont have to be a pro stunt driver to make it to work every day without dying. I honestly dont know what hes getting at. Actually I think most people are significantly safer driving in a way that completely removes opportunity for skill expression. Waiting for other drivers, going normal speeds, not doing something else while driving, etc. Driving should be pretty unskillfull and boring if safe.
        sokoloff 3y ago
        > definitely don't have the skills of someone who practices either daily And that is exactly the premise of one proposed mechanism by which serious accident rates (and insured losses) may have increased during a period when a great many people who previously practiced something daily then did not do so: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39247101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39247101
- noirbot 3y ago
  Isn't that just reflecting that you have the exact amount of skill of someone who drives every 3 months? What OP is talking about is people who likely drove for an hour or more every day suddenly barely driving more than a couple times a week for a year or more, and are now back to driving daily. That's completely different from just not driving much all the time.
- qup 3y ago
  I've noticed truck drivers in particular have gotten much worse. They used to be overall very good. For the last 5 years or so, noticeably worse. Everyone else was already bad.
  - musicale 3y ago
    I'd like to see slow trucks drive in the right lane rather than the left lane, and I'd like them to stay within the lane lines whenever possible rather than randomly drifting across them.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      Stupid question, but to this day I can't get the idea of overtaking. Any given stretch of the road has a speed limit. That limit is well below the maximum capability of almost any car on the road. From the POV of traffic regulations, you'd expect drivers on either lane to drive at that limit. What is, then, the point of overtaking? The cars are swapping places back and forth, but otherwise are (supposed to be) moving at the same speed. Is it a way for some to work around speed limits (by always overtaking forward, never being overtaken), or just a pointless dance to keep drivers from being bored and falling asleep behind the wheel?
      - mjevans 3y ago
        Drivers are supposed to keep right (outside/slower lanes) except to pass. That's the law in WA state and probably in most parts of the country. As far as I know it's also the law in other countries too; offhand on the Autobon. In theory, the lanes further left should be at about the speed limit and the lanes to the right could be for slower long haul or dangerous loads driving, such as large and heavy trucks which might have a lower speed limit on some sections of road. In practice, please keep right except to pass and don't cause a traffic hazard trying to enforce slowness upon speeders with a rolling roadblock.
      - tomp 3y ago
        Yeah one wishes it would actually work like that. Unfortunately there’s many drivers that drive below the (already low) speed limits. Add to that curvy road and it becomes much worse (you can drive much closer to the limit by accelerating and braking dynamically).
- blitzar 3y ago
  80% of drivers think they are safer than the average driver
hx8 3y ago
As in outsider of the auto industry this sounds like a classic blame-the-customer attitude that exists in many industries. The auto industry attributes the increase of severity and frequency of auto accidents to an external party so they share zero liability.
- noirbot 3y ago
  That doesn't seem like it follows though. Most people are driving the same car they were driving in 2019. It's not like the auto industry went and changed everyone's cars and repaved the roads or something. If this was some long term trend, then sure, easier to see how you could explain it with changes in headlights or ride height or some other factor of how cars are designed. A dramatic increase in amount and severity of accidents after a major world-impacting event like the pandemic seems like exactly the sort of thing that would make sense to be some change in the way people drive. This isn't "Oh, the users just hate the new Slack design. What idiots." For 90+ percent of the US, nothing has changed about the cars or roads in the last 4 years any more than the 4 years before that, and yet the outcomes of driving have changed.
- Kalium 3y ago
  How do you imagine the auto insurance industry is driving this change in customer behavior and outcomes? I cannot imagine any way in which it's the fault of the insurers, but I know that this is merely a failure of my imagination. Bear in mind that the auto insurance industry is quite distinct from the auto manufacturing industry.
- butukno 3y ago
  Unfortunately for you physics allows for just such a scenario. Will go with the science versus confirmation bias of some rando
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  I doubt the auto industry is to blame for increases in crashes, which seems to be the implication of your comment.
- wodenokoto 3y ago
Melting_Harps 3y ago
> This is on top of the serious increase in parts due to supply chain issues. I understand you work in the insurance Industry, but I worked in the auto Industry before and after COVID and just went through 2 total loss claims with my insurance and handled a lot of these third party warranty policies for my customers and think I have a more nuanced perspective than your own as mine is multi-dimensional. I can tell you that while it's true people may be driving more aggressively, not after but during COVID as police weren't pulling people as frequently due to fear of contamination coupled with emptier streets, but the real reason claims are being declared a total loss (resulting in higher costs) is exactly because of the disruption in the supply chain and the shortage of parts kept in inventory for even 5 year old vehicles. After dieselgate, Mitsubishi US was absorbed by Nissan US, who has been undergoing a great deal of pain since the ousting of Carlos Ghosn who left it in economic shambles with bad financing policies that resulted in lots of cost cuts during and many more after the Renault feud. Trying to get parts for a 2017 Mitsubishi after 2020 in the US was futile as the two dealerships merged together. It was often the case that you were better off purchasing parts from Hyundai for shared platforms as getting them from Japan were difficult if not impossible as they had severe COVID restrictions and the plants stopped and the catalogs/inventory seemingly vanished in a matter of months during the first year of COVID. I have had many battles with submitting adjusted insurance claims for service/parts that made me think the burden of a owning an imperfect new car was best solved by selling it back to the dealership at the inflated offer they were paying back then and getting a 'good enough' used car from us or elsewhere given how much time was being wasted dealing with these policies. One customer I inherited had a 3 year old VW CC was using our loaner for over 6 months waiting for an ECU and a harness which was covered by parts and labour by VW, and this was in 2023! My Italian motorcycle was broken into and it's main wiring loom was ripped apart in the process, and declared a total loss: the cost to repair and replace was projected to be about $1500, which is reasonable but the problem there was over a 2 year waiting list and it was unlikely to ever be found since the part was made by Ducati before it was absorbed by VW Audi Group and was impossible to be found in even the HQ in Bologna according to owners because demand for it was low as it was known to be a defective part and best to solve by swapping out with parts from more widely available Suzuki models but meant changing everything from the stator onward to work reliably which easily tripled the initial estimate. Add to the fact that this bike had low sales figures outside of Italy and I took the settlement offer and gave up on ever owning one again. The same thing happened to my much less rare Japanese motorcycle, which was much older and less expensive but the same thing occurred: deemed fixable but no parts can be found so is declared a total loss. My insurance rates just went up by 25% 2 months ago, despite them not having gone up during these two events (over 6 months ago and months after my policy renewal) or even after 2 tickets several years back as I have an otherwise clean record and I'm beyond the risk age. The response given to me by my insurer was that 'everything is going up' and that servicing my policy was naturally also subject to a price increase but was not a direct result of the aforementioned reasons which makes me think that in fact no... insurance in the US is not too cheap but incredibly convoluted and subject to arbitrary price increases.
giantrobot 3y ago
Just anecdata, it really seems like drivers are significantly worse after COVID than before. Not just on main roads but on side streets and parking lots. I can't say if it's due to driving less during shutdowns or a confluence of other issues but people seem to drive shockingly worse.
- ikr678 3y ago
  Smartphone use. App use while driving, wearing airpods and the like, more vehicles with monitors, more integration between phone apps and car entertainment systems to fiddle around with? I have defintely seen private drivers watching tiktok on the highway, and ride share drivers either trying to manage jobs across multiple smartphones, or spending their shift in a discord/group call with some friends.
  - Root_Denied 3y ago
    It's this plus a distinct lack of enforcement. I've driven in 3 major cities over the last decade (LA, SF, Seattle) and in all of them the local police departments have been ignoring a lot of traffic infractions that they would have pulled people over for before. The shift seemed to happen after there was that "Defund the Police" call and the BLM protests.
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      > The shift seemed to happen after there was that "Defund the Police" call and the BLM protests. No surprise there, it's not the first time police unions have decided to just not enforce any laws at all to get politicians to do what they want.
      - zzleeper 3y ago
        As much as I would want, I wouldn't place all the blame on the police. Just here in Virginia, we are struggling with: https://www.moheblegal.com/blog/2021/08/new-va-law-prohibits-traffic-stops-for-minor-safety-violations https://www.moheblegal.com/blog/2021/08/new-va-law-prohibits... > In March 2021, a new Virginia law went into effect that prohibits law enforcement officers from making traffic stops for certain minor offenses. This law prohibits police from stopping you if you are e.g. missing a taillight or a brake light, which for me feels insane. There are similar things in DC/MD as far as I can recall
pyuser583 3y ago
This is purely anecdotal, but driver quality seemed to go down during the BLM protests of 2020. Kind of like the “f** the police” was being applied to traffic enforcement. Do you know if the timing was significant? Did anything significant happen with driving stats happen in June of 2020?
- buro9 3y ago
  A global pandemic and less driving? I'm not sure why you'd need to pick out BLM in any way here
  - pyuser583 3y ago
    Because, in my purely anecdotal experience, drivers got much much worse in early June of 2020. Not April 2020. Not July 2020. June (and very late May) of 2020. Part of the issue was that lots of roads were blocked. Both protestors and police were blocking roads. Large portions of downtown were shut down. Bus services were mostly canceled. And the police were very very stretched thin. So there are reasons other than “attitude” why these protests might be affecting traffic. But it was shocking how bad drivers got so quickly. It didn’t seem gradual.
npunt 3y ago
Huge missing variable is cognitive impairment from covid. It may affect up to ~20-30% of people several months after getting it [1][2][3], but whatever the exact rate, it's an amount that is orders of magnitude more than the accident rate. "The most frequent symptoms seem to affect memory, attention, and concentration" [4]. We generally suck at assessing our level of impairment (see drunk drivers), so if we're used to driving a certain way and no longer have the capacity to do so safely, eventually something's going to happen to some of us. Given the magnitude of ongoing covid infections and the still very low per capita accident rate, this could be the single best explanation of an uptick in accidents. It's not a surprise it's overlooked though, as statistically we don't really track cognitive abilities except in education contexts and individually we tend to downplay or ignore any changes in how we think. Cognition is largely invisible as a measure. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/13/upshot/long-covid-disability.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/13/upshot/long-covid-disabil... or https://archive.ph/RnBZ2 https://archive.ph/RnBZ2 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8715665/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8715665/ [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8798975/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8798975/ [4] https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-075387 https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-075387
- LorenPechtel 3y ago
  I hadn't thought of that aspect but I strongly suspect this is the cause. If a change happens gradually you're not going to notice it until there's some glaring indication of it. And you often won't notice that things haven't returned to baseline when you know there was a deviation. (Observation: Long Covid is more common amongst athletes. Really? Or are they actually measuring a baseline and seeing they aren't what they used to be?)
mattmaroon 3y ago
It seems fairly silly to think that Covid really changed how people drive. You didn’t drive for a month and you just forgot, and then in the intervening three years did not relearn it? That isn’t how humans work. I don’t doubt you that it is widely believed, it just doesn’t make sense. More likely is that due to distracted driver growth since the advent of smart phones, we’re all just getting a little worse every year, so every year is a new high watermark.
- phil21 3y ago
  > It seems fairly silly to think that Covid really changed how people drive. As someone who has driven before, during, and after I think it's silly to think Covid didn't change how people drive. It's a night and day difference from 2019 to 2023 (first year of "back to normal") that cannot be explained by a gradual shift of people becoming more immersed in technology. The attitudes in society towards law and order and what is acceptable day to day have massively shifted. Enforcement (at least where I am from) seems to be nonexistent too - and I think COVID laid that fact bare. People realized no one is actually watching or caring about what they do. Why not drive 55mph on the shoulder to get around that traffic jam if you know there are zero social or legal ramifications?
  - mattmaroon 3y ago
    I was driving quite a long time before Covid, and I drive about 50,000 miles a year. I’ve noticed a long, slow decrease in how well people drive, but I don’t think it has changed any more dramatically in the last three years. if you took the trendline prior to 2020 and drew it to 2023, it would get you to pretty much where we are today in terms of accidents and fatalities. They had already started increasing again before Covid. And in any case, the plural of anecdote is not data. there’s just really no data to support the idea that everybody not driving for a month, and then driving less for a year or two, has made people worse at driving.
  - drc500free 3y ago
    I wish I could find it, but I read a study recently about participation in the social contract that used a question like "would you run a rural red light with no one around?" as their metric. A lot more people say yes now than before 2020.

wegfawefgawefg 3y ago

I dont know. I only drive once every three months or so. and every once in a while Ill go on a huge roadtrip across the country. I have never noticed any loss in driving skill.

lostlogin 3y ago
Assuming you are talking about a loss in your own skills, isn’t this exactly what the OP is describing? If people perceived a change in their own abilities, the problem would likely not exist.
- darkerside 3y ago
  This, and perhaps parent's driving skill has just been poor for a very long time now. No drop, just sitting at the bottom.
  - Melting_Harps 3y ago
    > This, and perhaps parent's driving skill has just been poor for a very long time now. No drop, just sitting at the bottom. I'm not trying to be mean, but the adage in poker of spotting the fool at the table here applies. And as a person who rides bicycles, motorcycles as well as drives cars, and has driven in the EU with much stricter driving requirements I'd say there has been a massive drop in aptitude over all. So much so that I just want to live a life that allows me to be car-free now. EVs are nice, but having everything I want within walking distance is much more preferable.
    - fransje26 3y ago
      > EVs are nice, but having everything I want within walking distance is much more preferable. Come back to Europe.. ;-)
    - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
      that's not been my experience, maybe you just live amongst morons?
- wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
  Its a car. You turn the wheel and press the two buttons. I've beaten spelunky 1, and 2. Im also sporty and coordinated. I know what good motor skills look and feel like, and what being bad at something feels like. If there is a suspicion of skill loss in the population, i dont know why so many people in this thread would blindly accept that. We should all put our good boy skeptic scientist hats on. Are the changes in chrash severity and frequency even for all types of people? Doubtful. In what age ranges and occupations are the biggest changes in. "People crash more now because sudden population wide skill loss" doesnt even pass the basic sanity test. Im gonna need some evidence.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    > Its a car. You turn the wheel and press the two buttons. Given that summary, I'm not surprised that you cannot detect any degradation in your driving skill during a period of not practicing.
    - noirbot 3y ago
      I don't think it's degradation any more than my skills at golf or basketball degrade in the 6 months between times I play either of them. I'm the baseline level of good enough that I'm competent, but I definitely don't have the skills of someone who practices either daily.
      - wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
        Right, and you dont have to be a pro stunt driver to make it to work every day without dying. I honestly dont know what hes getting at. Actually I think most people are significantly safer driving in a way that completely removes opportunity for skill expression. Waiting for other drivers, going normal speeds, not doing something else while driving, etc. Driving should be pretty unskillfull and boring if safe.
      - sokoloff 3y ago
        > definitely don't have the skills of someone who practices either daily And that is exactly the premise of one proposed mechanism by which serious accident rates (and insured losses) may have increased during a period when a great many people who previously practiced something daily then did not do so: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39247101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39247101
noirbot 3y ago
Isn't that just reflecting that you have the exact amount of skill of someone who drives every 3 months? What OP is talking about is people who likely drove for an hour or more every day suddenly barely driving more than a couple times a week for a year or more, and are now back to driving daily. That's completely different from just not driving much all the time.
qup 3y ago
I've noticed truck drivers in particular have gotten much worse. They used to be overall very good. For the last 5 years or so, noticeably worse. Everyone else was already bad.
- musicale 3y ago
  I'd like to see slow trucks drive in the right lane rather than the left lane, and I'd like them to stay within the lane lines whenever possible rather than randomly drifting across them.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    Stupid question, but to this day I can't get the idea of overtaking. Any given stretch of the road has a speed limit. That limit is well below the maximum capability of almost any car on the road. From the POV of traffic regulations, you'd expect drivers on either lane to drive at that limit. What is, then, the point of overtaking? The cars are swapping places back and forth, but otherwise are (supposed to be) moving at the same speed. Is it a way for some to work around speed limits (by always overtaking forward, never being overtaken), or just a pointless dance to keep drivers from being bored and falling asleep behind the wheel?
    - mjevans 3y ago
      Drivers are supposed to keep right (outside/slower lanes) except to pass. That's the law in WA state and probably in most parts of the country. As far as I know it's also the law in other countries too; offhand on the Autobon. In theory, the lanes further left should be at about the speed limit and the lanes to the right could be for slower long haul or dangerous loads driving, such as large and heavy trucks which might have a lower speed limit on some sections of road. In practice, please keep right except to pass and don't cause a traffic hazard trying to enforce slowness upon speeders with a rolling roadblock.
    - tomp 3y ago
      Yeah one wishes it would actually work like that. Unfortunately there’s many drivers that drive below the (already low) speed limits. Add to that curvy road and it becomes much worse (you can drive much closer to the limit by accelerating and braking dynamically).
blitzar 3y ago
80% of drivers think they are safer than the average driver

hx8 3y ago

As in outsider of the auto industry this sounds like a classic blame-the-customer attitude that exists in many industries. The auto industry attributes the increase of severity and frequency of auto accidents to an external party so they share zero liability.

noirbot 3y ago
That doesn't seem like it follows though. Most people are driving the same car they were driving in 2019. It's not like the auto industry went and changed everyone's cars and repaved the roads or something. If this was some long term trend, then sure, easier to see how you could explain it with changes in headlights or ride height or some other factor of how cars are designed. A dramatic increase in amount and severity of accidents after a major world-impacting event like the pandemic seems like exactly the sort of thing that would make sense to be some change in the way people drive. This isn't "Oh, the users just hate the new Slack design. What idiots." For 90+ percent of the US, nothing has changed about the cars or roads in the last 4 years any more than the 4 years before that, and yet the outcomes of driving have changed.
Kalium 3y ago
How do you imagine the auto insurance industry is driving this change in customer behavior and outcomes? I cannot imagine any way in which it's the fault of the insurers, but I know that this is merely a failure of my imagination. Bear in mind that the auto insurance industry is quite distinct from the auto manufacturing industry.
butukno 3y ago
Unfortunately for you physics allows for just such a scenario. Will go with the science versus confirmation bias of some rando
whimsicalism 3y ago
I doubt the auto industry is to blame for increases in crashes, which seems to be the implication of your comment.
wodenokoto 3y ago

Melting_Harps 3y ago

> This is on top of the serious increase in parts due to supply chain issues. I understand you work in the insurance Industry, but I worked in the auto Industry before and after COVID and just went through 2 total loss claims with my insurance and handled a lot of these third party warranty policies for my customers and think I have a more nuanced perspective than your own as mine is multi-dimensional. I can tell you that while it's true people may be driving more aggressively, not after but during COVID as police weren't pulling people as frequently due to fear of contamination coupled with emptier streets, but the real reason claims are being declared a total loss (resulting in higher costs) is exactly because of the disruption in the supply chain and the shortage of parts kept in inventory for even 5 year old vehicles. After dieselgate, Mitsubishi US was absorbed by Nissan US, who has been undergoing a great deal of pain since the ousting of Carlos Ghosn who left it in economic shambles with bad financing policies that resulted in lots of cost cuts during and many more after the Renault feud. Trying to get parts for a 2017 Mitsubishi after 2020 in the US was futile as the two dealerships merged together. It was often the case that you were better off purchasing parts from Hyundai for shared platforms as getting them from Japan were difficult if not impossible as they had severe COVID restrictions and the plants stopped and the catalogs/inventory seemingly vanished in a matter of months during the first year of COVID. I have had many battles with submitting adjusted insurance claims for service/parts that made me think the burden of a owning an imperfect new car was best solved by selling it back to the dealership at the inflated offer they were paying back then and getting a 'good enough' used car from us or elsewhere given how much time was being wasted dealing with these policies. One customer I inherited had a 3 year old VW CC was using our loaner for over 6 months waiting for an ECU and a harness which was covered by parts and labour by VW, and this was in 2023! My Italian motorcycle was broken into and it's main wiring loom was ripped apart in the process, and declared a total loss: the cost to repair and replace was projected to be about $1500, which is reasonable but the problem there was over a 2 year waiting list and it was unlikely to ever be found since the part was made by Ducati before it was absorbed by VW Audi Group and was impossible to be found in even the HQ in Bologna according to owners because demand for it was low as it was known to be a defective part and best to solve by swapping out with parts from more widely available Suzuki models but meant changing everything from the stator onward to work reliably which easily tripled the initial estimate. Add to the fact that this bike had low sales figures outside of Italy and I took the settlement offer and gave up on ever owning one again. The same thing happened to my much less rare Japanese motorcycle, which was much older and less expensive but the same thing occurred: deemed fixable but no parts can be found so is declared a total loss. My insurance rates just went up by 25% 2 months ago, despite them not having gone up during these two events (over 6 months ago and months after my policy renewal) or even after 2 tickets several years back as I have an otherwise clean record and I'm beyond the risk age. The response given to me by my insurer was that 'everything is going up' and that servicing my policy was naturally also subject to a price increase but was not a direct result of the aforementioned reasons which makes me think that in fact no... insurance in the US is not too cheap but incredibly convoluted and subject to arbitrary price increases.

giantrobot 3y ago

Just anecdata, it really seems like drivers are significantly worse after COVID than before. Not just on main roads but on side streets and parking lots. I can't say if it's due to driving less during shutdowns or a confluence of other issues but people seem to drive shockingly worse.

ikr678 3y ago
Smartphone use. App use while driving, wearing airpods and the like, more vehicles with monitors, more integration between phone apps and car entertainment systems to fiddle around with? I have defintely seen private drivers watching tiktok on the highway, and ride share drivers either trying to manage jobs across multiple smartphones, or spending their shift in a discord/group call with some friends.
- Root_Denied 3y ago
  It's this plus a distinct lack of enforcement. I've driven in 3 major cities over the last decade (LA, SF, Seattle) and in all of them the local police departments have been ignoring a lot of traffic infractions that they would have pulled people over for before. The shift seemed to happen after there was that "Defund the Police" call and the BLM protests.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > The shift seemed to happen after there was that "Defund the Police" call and the BLM protests. No surprise there, it's not the first time police unions have decided to just not enforce any laws at all to get politicians to do what they want.
    - zzleeper 3y ago
      As much as I would want, I wouldn't place all the blame on the police. Just here in Virginia, we are struggling with: https://www.moheblegal.com/blog/2021/08/new-va-law-prohibits-traffic-stops-for-minor-safety-violations https://www.moheblegal.com/blog/2021/08/new-va-law-prohibits... > In March 2021, a new Virginia law went into effect that prohibits law enforcement officers from making traffic stops for certain minor offenses. This law prohibits police from stopping you if you are e.g. missing a taillight or a brake light, which for me feels insane. There are similar things in DC/MD as far as I can recall

pyuser583 3y ago

This is purely anecdotal, but driver quality seemed to go down during the BLM protests of 2020. Kind of like the “f** the police” was being applied to traffic enforcement. Do you know if the timing was significant? Did anything significant happen with driving stats happen in June of 2020?

buro9 3y ago
A global pandemic and less driving? I'm not sure why you'd need to pick out BLM in any way here
- pyuser583 3y ago
  Because, in my purely anecdotal experience, drivers got much much worse in early June of 2020. Not April 2020. Not July 2020. June (and very late May) of 2020. Part of the issue was that lots of roads were blocked. Both protestors and police were blocking roads. Large portions of downtown were shut down. Bus services were mostly canceled. And the police were very very stretched thin. So there are reasons other than “attitude” why these protests might be affecting traffic. But it was shocking how bad drivers got so quickly. It didn’t seem gradual.

npunt 3y ago

Huge missing variable is cognitive impairment from covid. It may affect up to ~20-30% of people several months after getting it [1][2][3], but whatever the exact rate, it's an amount that is orders of magnitude more than the accident rate. "The most frequent symptoms seem to affect memory, attention, and concentration" [4]. We generally suck at assessing our level of impairment (see drunk drivers), so if we're used to driving a certain way and no longer have the capacity to do so safely, eventually something's going to happen to some of us. Given the magnitude of ongoing covid infections and the still very low per capita accident rate, this could be the single best explanation of an uptick in accidents. It's not a surprise it's overlooked though, as statistically we don't really track cognitive abilities except in education contexts and individually we tend to downplay or ignore any changes in how we think. Cognition is largely invisible as a measure. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/13/upshot/long-covid-disability.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/13/upshot/long-covid-disabil... or https://archive.ph/RnBZ2 https://archive.ph/RnBZ2 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8715665/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8715665/ [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8798975/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8798975/ [4] https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-075387 https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-075387

LorenPechtel 3y ago
I hadn't thought of that aspect but I strongly suspect this is the cause. If a change happens gradually you're not going to notice it until there's some glaring indication of it. And you often won't notice that things haven't returned to baseline when you know there was a deviation. (Observation: Long Covid is more common amongst athletes. Really? Or are they actually measuring a baseline and seeing they aren't what they used to be?)

mattmaroon 3y ago

It seems fairly silly to think that Covid really changed how people drive. You didn’t drive for a month and you just forgot, and then in the intervening three years did not relearn it? That isn’t how humans work. I don’t doubt you that it is widely believed, it just doesn’t make sense. More likely is that due to distracted driver growth since the advent of smart phones, we’re all just getting a little worse every year, so every year is a new high watermark.

phil21 3y ago
> It seems fairly silly to think that Covid really changed how people drive. As someone who has driven before, during, and after I think it's silly to think Covid didn't change how people drive. It's a night and day difference from 2019 to 2023 (first year of "back to normal") that cannot be explained by a gradual shift of people becoming more immersed in technology. The attitudes in society towards law and order and what is acceptable day to day have massively shifted. Enforcement (at least where I am from) seems to be nonexistent too - and I think COVID laid that fact bare. People realized no one is actually watching or caring about what they do. Why not drive 55mph on the shoulder to get around that traffic jam if you know there are zero social or legal ramifications?
- mattmaroon 3y ago
  I was driving quite a long time before Covid, and I drive about 50,000 miles a year. I’ve noticed a long, slow decrease in how well people drive, but I don’t think it has changed any more dramatically in the last three years. if you took the trendline prior to 2020 and drew it to 2023, it would get you to pretty much where we are today in terms of accidents and fatalities. They had already started increasing again before Covid. And in any case, the plural of anecdote is not data. there’s just really no data to support the idea that everybody not driving for a month, and then driving less for a year or two, has made people worse at driving.
- drc500free 3y ago
  I wish I could find it, but I read a study recently about participation in the social contract that used a question like "would you run a rural red light with no one around?" as their metric. A lot more people say yes now than before 2020.