Are American drivers ‘out of control’?

The year 2020 was a tough one in a lot of ways, including traffic safety. And it looks like America’s highways and roads were even deadlier in 2021. A report from the group Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety says that as a country, our drivers are “out of control.”

The report refers to the fact that traffic deaths rose 7 percent from 2019 to 2020, despite drivers covering fewer miles that year due to pandemic lockdowns. We don’t have the national number of fatalities in car accidents for 2021 yet, but the information we do know is troubling. For the first six months of last year, about 20,000 people were killed in traffic collisions, an 18 percent increase from the first half of 2020. The Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety call this the largest year-over-year increase in accident deaths since at least 1975.

The grim numbers for Utah

Here in Utah, preliminary data for 2021 reveals at least 320 deaths, which would be a 16 percent jump from 2020 and the most the state has had since 2002. KSL reports that the biggest factors in the increased fatalities included speeding and drunk driving. Such behavior is always a problem but seems to be getting worse.

Responsible drivers are always on the lookout for reckless motorists. We do what we can to avoid a speeder or someone showing signs of driving while impaired or distracted. But we can’t always avoid getting hit by a negligent driver, and sometimes, people get seriously hurt this way. You may not have been able to prevent injury, but you can control how you seek compensation from the person re