After years of steady progress making highways safer, auto-safety advocates are voicing alarm over a surge in traffic fatalities and fears that the deadly trend is strengthening.
As The New York Times reports, traffic deaths last year increased 6% to 40,200, according to preliminary estimates released today by the National Safety Council, a nonprofit organization that works closely with federal safety agencies.
If the estimates are confirmed, it will be the first time since 2007 that more than 40,000 have died in motor vehicle crashes in a single year. The 2016 total follows a 7% rise in 2015.
The safety council’s figures typically closely track the fatality totals that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration compiles. The NHTSA has not yet released a total for 2016.
Part of the increase is believed to stem from the improving economy, which causes Americans to drive more miles. But safety advocates say other factors are at work—in particular, slack enforcement of seatbelt, drunken driving and speeding laws.
“Our complacency is killing us. Americans believe there is nothing we can do to stop crashes from happening, but that isn’t true,” Deborah Hersman, the council’s president and chief executive, says in a statement. “The U.S. lags the rest of the developed world in addressing highway fatalities. We know what needs to be done; we just haven’t done it.”
