In an alarming trend, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has announced that Black people are substantially more likely to die in traffic accidents than white men or women. Even during peak quarantine, when people were driving less due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of Black deaths moved in the opposite direction, increasing significantly.
Char Adams of NBC News reported that “an estimated 38,680 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes in 2020 — the largest projected number of deaths since 2007.” Disturbingly, she noted that “the number of Black people who died in such crashes was up 23% from 2019, the largest increase in traffic deaths among [all] racial groups.”
In an interview with Adams, Norman Garrick, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of Connecticut, said that while the numbers were alarming, he wasn’t surprised by them.
